


all things truly wicked

by twocankeepasecret



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mystery, WE COULD HAVE HAD IT ALL, au from 4x20, ezra really was A, if 4b hadn't had any takebacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-17 00:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 30,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8123179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twocankeepasecret/pseuds/twocankeepasecret
Summary: "...he's freakin' A!" | An AU from 4x20 in which Spencer was right, and it really was Ezra all along.





	1. the lady vanishes

Aria’s never been more aware of anything in her life than she is of Ezra’s proximity to her, his body heat suffocating despite the crisp breeze of the early winter night, her back digging into the metal rods of the chairlift so hard she can feel it through her skin to the bones of her ribcage. She can’t seem to breathe, can’t seem to think – or maybe she can’t seem to stop thinking, her brain is whirring like a nest of wasps, thoughts crossing her mind so fast she can’t latch onto a single one. Ezra’s eyes seem to gleam in the dark, so blue, always so blue; she used to think blue eyes were so romantic, but now she thinks he has the gaze of a wolf.

“Aria, Aria,” he says, and then the lift starts up and she tries to scream, but she doesn’t have enough air in her lungs for that so it comes out as a choked gasp, “I didn’t mean for it to end this way.”

“Wh-what does that mean?” she manages to get out, chest heaving. Her knuckles hurt from clutching the bar that’s keeping her trapped. _I didn’t mean for it to end this way_ , she’s heard that line before, in a thousand books and movies, right before someone gets killed. She tries to tighten her grip on the chairlift; he might try to push her off, that’s what happens to the villain’s lover in some old movies, they get thrown off buildings or bridges or out of windows – oh god, what if he really is going to kill her?

This is Ezra. This – if she weren’t so scared she would vomit.

Ezra’s jaw twitches. “I didn’t think you’d find the pages,” he says, and his voice is very even and very controlled but she knows him, she doesn’t know anything true about him but she knows him, she knows he’s angry, she can hear it, can see it in the terseness of his lips.

“About Alison?” she gets out, and it comes out halfway between a scream and a sob. Her breathing is so fast she’s dizzy. “They were about Alison!” Her chest hurts, hurts from hyperventilating, but she can’t seem to stop. “You know Alison! You knew her!”

“Yes, I knew Alison,” Ezra replied, and she’s never not once heard that voice from him before, or at least, not directed at her; he sounds fed up with her. The hearing of it makes her sob again.

“You told me you didn’t know her, you _lied_ –“

“Yes, I lied,” he says again, through gritted teeth. The chairlift lurches, and somehow he uses the momentum to slide closer to her. “You weren’t supposed to find out. You were the one who was never supposed to–”

“What – I –” She remembers Spencer, hysterical in her kitchen. _He’s freaking A! Oh my god, this is brilliant!_ “They know,” she gasps out, “they know, the others–”

“You think I don’t know that?” he bites out, and she takes a shuddering breath. “You weren’t supposed to believe them, you didn’t believe it, _damn it_ –”

“You wanted Alison dead,” she gets out, and something inside of her sparks up like ice-cold fury and god, god it feels so much better to be angry than to be scared. She pulls up every ounce of anger she can reach and tries to drown herself in it. “You wanted her dead. You thought you got her pregnant–”

“I did get her pregnant,” Ezra retorts, throwing the words at her like a slap, and she pulls back, hands trembling.

“Wh… what?” she asks.

“I did get Alison pregnant,” Ezra tells her, and the control in his voice is slipping, he sounds half-crazed, she’s never heard him sound wild before. “She had the baby, without telling me, without telling anyone–”

“Alison doesn’t have a baby!” She can’t, she can’t have a baby, even when they’d all believed Ali had gotten pregnant they’d never considered that she’d had a baby. Ali didn’t have a freaking _baby_. Aria swallows, tries to get the violent trembling of her jaw under control. “Alison doesn’t know who–”

“Of course she knows,” Ezra snaps. “God, I thought she reached out to Emily because Emily was the only one who’d believe her sob story bullshit. I didn’t realize the rest of you were all that gullible.”

Aria makes a sound like a wounded animal; she didn’t even know she had that sound inside of her.

They’re almost at the top of the hill, and Aria thinks, _if I can only make it off, I can run for it_. She thinks she’s small enough to wriggle out without lifting the bar. She tries to scoot so she’s sitting right at the edge, poised to move, and then Ezra just about throws himself over her, throwing off the balance of the whole chair, and trapping her: his knee is pinned between her thighs and his forearm is pressed against her collarbone, holding her against her seat so she doesn’t have a hope in hell of moving.

“Let go of me,” she pleads, struggling against him even though she knows there’s no use, and once they’ve gone round the bend and the ground is far enough that she couldn’t even consider jumping, he does, going back to where he was sitting. She curls into the corner of the chair, shivering.

She closes her eyes and pulls up her entire constructed image of what happened the night Alison went missing, the bits and pieces she’s put together from the stories people have told about seeing her that night; how she’d seen Toby, how she’d met Ian at the kissing rock, how she’d seen Garrett and Jenna, how she’d tried to blackmail Aria’s dad – and she tries to plant Ezra in the image, at the very end of it all, bashing Ali’s head in and burying her alive, leaving her for dead.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asks. That’s always what the girl asks in the movies. The answer is usually yes, she remembers, a moment too late.

“I’m tempted,” he bites out, and she swallows down a whimper. He gives her an exasperated look. “No, of course I’m not going to kill you,” he says. “Do you really think I’ve set up everything I’ve set up, moved all the pieces I’ve moved, waited and watched as long as I have just to kill you?”

He’s been running the game for months, and she hadn’t even noticed. And here she thought she was so clever and grown up.

“What are you going to do?” she asks, voice wavering.

He looks at her, and for a moment he looks like _her_ Ezra, like he’s in love with her, fascinated with her, like he worships her. It’s so familiar, and so right. _There has to be an explanation,_ she thinks, _please, please let there be an explanation._

His lips spread into a small smile; or maybe it’s a smirk. She’s never seen him smirk before.

“I guess I’m going to improvise,” he says.

He drags her back to his car by the upper arm, and she stumbles along next to him, feeling almost numb. This doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense. She can’t wrap her mind around the idea that this is real, she just can’t, if she thinks too hard about this she’ll accept that it is and if she accepts that it is she’ll scream until he has to rip out her vocal chords so she can’t accept it. She just can’t.

When he slams her car door shut for her, something hits her like a freight train.

“Did you know who I was?” Aria asks, when he sits down in the driver’s seat. “When you met me. At –”

She feels nauseous. That memory – her at the bar, the gorgeous, smart older guy she’d connected with in a second, that chemistry, that spark, that love at first sight – what if it was all a lie? She feels desecrated, like a castle stormed, robbed and left with the all the windows still open, wind and rain blowing in and drenching the ruins that remained.

“Yes, I knew who you were,” Ezra says, and puts the car in drive. “Ali’s little pink-haired friend whose dad was having the oh-so-scandalous affair. I knew who you were the second you walked into that bar.”

“Oh my god,” Aria says, in a high, breathless voice.

After a moment, Ezra continues, as though answering a question he’d been waiting for her to ask. “I met Alison in Cape May, that summer,” he says. “She and CeCe Drake had the run of place. We met at a little beachside bar, and she told me her name was Vivian, that she was nineteen and from New York and that she was starting her sophomore year of college in LA that year, and I believed every word she said. The next day, I saw her at a restaurant, with her family and her older brother, and I realized that every word she’d said to me was a lie. I was mesmerized.”

Board Shorts. Of course.

“I started seeking her out. At first, I’d bar hop until I found wherever she was that night. Then, I started watching her during the day, figuring out where she was going, what she was planning, where I’d find her. And every night, without fail, she was someone else, putting on some other play, weaving some story or telling some lie. She was like something out of Wilde: ‘ _She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual_ ’ _,_ ” he quotes.

He uses his special quoting voice, the slight lilt he always puts on when reciting someone else’s words. Aria’s never heard him use it to describe anyone other than herself.

“Stop,” she says, voice shaking.

Ezra looks over at her. “Stop?” he repeats, tone dangerous.

“Stop talking,” she says, tremulous. “Just stop, I don’t – I don’t want to hear anymore, I don’t want to know anymore, just stop.”

“You don’t want to know anymore?” Ezra asks, his voice mocking. “Spencer would be ashamed of you.”

Spencer who knew. Spencer who’d figured it out, who’d tried to _warn_ her – she can’t do this.

“Where are you taking me?” she asks.

Ezra raises an eyebrow. “Back to the cabin,” he tells her.

Aria swallows. “Are you going to keep me there?”

Ezra rolls his eyes. “No, Aria, I’m going to let you run back to Rosewood and tell everyone the truth about me.”

She’s not used to him being sarcastic, or at least, not to being the butt of his sarcasm; every word feels like mockery.

She had sex with Ezra just the other night.

She clamps a hand over her mouth as bile rises in her throat. _You have to start thinking of me as the person you are closest to_. She’d lost her virginity to him.

He’s A, he’s A, he’s A.

“People are going to notice I’m missing,” Aria says.

Ezra laughs at that. “Oh, sure. Eventually.”

“The girls are going to notice I’m missing,” she says. “They’ll–“

“What are they going to do, Aria?” he asks. “Spencer is spiraling so badly she can’t even remember her own last name half the time, Hanna’s playing mystery novel detective with Holbrook, and Emily’s about to break up with her girlfriend because she’s been in love with a dead girl for three years. What exactly do you think they can pull themselves together enough to do?”

“They’ll figure something out,” Aria says, in a small voice, not believing it for a moment.

“Maybe,” Ezra says, and he sounds like he’s humoring her.

She closes her eyes and wants this to be a nightmare. She wants to lash out and break all the buttons on his car and rip the leather off the seat. She wants to slap him so hard her rings break skin. She wants to get out of the car and start running until she drops dead. She wants to not be real anymore.

She sits back and wants, as though if she can just want hard enough she can make this all go away.

 


	2. the girl who knew too much

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Curiosity killed the cat. Give me Ali and you’ll get her back.’

There are a few things that happen when you have a serial cyber stalker throughout your teenage years who may or may not have attempted to murder your best friend.

First, you develop an all-consuming hatred for social media, and lose any interest in broadcasting your location, activities, or current appearance to the general public.

Second of all, you start taking it for granted that, unless you’re going to incredible lengths to be discreet, you’re always being watched. Someone always knows where you are and what you’re doing.

And third, considering the disastrous consequences when you try to ignore your stalker, you never, ever forget to check your phone.

Spencer would have been worried about not hearing back from Aria in over twelve hours under any circumstances, after over a year of A breathing down their necks. The fact that Aria was dating A, though? That made it all the worse.

“Aria,” she says into her sixth voicemail of the day, “Aria, please, if there isn’t anything wrong please, please let us know you’re okay. Please.”

She hangs up, takes a deep breath, sits down on her couch.

She hasn’t eaten in three days. It’s not because she doesn’t want to eat – except she doesn’t want to eat, the idea of food sounds beyond disgusting, she tried to eat a muffin yesterday and coughed it up because it felt like chalk and sawdust in her throat. She really does need a refill. Yes, she shouldn’t be taking this many pills, probably, but she has to focus on keeping everyone alive and getting Aria away from Ezra, and if everyone else could just see what she’s trying to do–

She’s sweat through her blouse already, so she grabs her phone to head upstairs and change, and so she feels it vibrate in her hand before her text tone even goes off.

It's a text from an unknown number, and Spencer swallows before opening it.

It’s a picture of Aria, lying on a cement floor. Spencer’s stomach drops. The air tastes sticky in her mouth, and she can’t seem to breathe in.

_‘Curiosity killed the cat. Give me Ali and you’ll get her back.’_

“Oh my god,” she says. She reached out for the railing, and misses twice more managing to grip it.

She never texts A back, it’s almost a rule, now, but he has Aria.

_‘I don’t know where Ali is. She doesn't trust me. Please don’t hurt Aria.’_

It seems to take forever for A – Fitz, she knows it’s Fitz, she’s sure – to reply. She stares at the three little dots that indicate his typing for what feels like forever.

_‘Go to the school’_ , he writes, at last. ‘ _Don’t tell the others.’_

She doesn’t have a choice, does she?

She drives to school – classes don’t start for an hour and a half. She parks, and sits for a few minutes, breathing heavily. She’s shaky from withdrawal–driving hadn’t been the best idea, now that she thinks about it.

A didn’t specify where she was supposed to go, but she can guess.

She makes for Ezra’s classroom.

She pauses in front of his classroom, unsure of what do expect, but then she steels herself and pushes open the door. It’s unlocked.

She goes straight to the desk, the desk Ezra found her passed out on the way before, and there’s a small black jewelry box sitting on it. She swallows, and, hands trembling, opens it.

There’s a full bottle of pills. She seizes it, picking it up to examine it. The prescription is written out to her _,_ _Hastings, Spencer_ , 60 capsules, Adderall IR 30mg, it’s all there, all hers. She screws open the bottle and downs a pill without thinking twice, and maybe it’s placebo effect, but she feels better the second it passes her lips.

She takes a drink from her water bottle, and then pauses, wiping her lips. If A wants her to have amphetamines, then A’s not threatened – it’s because of the pills that she’s gotten so close, figured out so much, found out who A was – is she wrong? A doesn’t just give things –

She looks down at the jewelry box, and underneath where the bottle was sitting, there’s a note.

_Find her. –A_

Find Ali. Find Alison, get Aria back. That’s the deal.

It can’t be that simple. If A’s taken Aria captive, he’s not just going to drop her off when he gets what he wants, and – it has to be Ezra. Aria was going over to Ezra’s apartment when they last heard from her. He had to have taken her captive there. And Aria’s leverage, he’s not going to give that up, and he’s not going to let Spencer just go around knowing as much as she knows–

And shit, she can’t give him Ali.

It worries her, that her unwillingness to give Ali up was the last reason on her list of cons to making a deal with A.

She doesn’t know why A is so desperate to get ahold of Ali now, why A wants her help when she didn’t even find out Ali was alive until a few weeks ago, it doesn’t make sense, she doesn’t know–

“Spencer,” says Ezra’s voice, from the door. She spins around to face him; he looks unthreatening and clean-shaven as can be. “You’re here early. You didn’t sleep here again, did you?”

“N-no,” she says, and drops the bottle of pills in her bag.

She thinks Ezra’s gaze might be sinister, but overall, he’s inscrutable, as always. She blinks three times.

“I trust you found what you were looking for?” he asks.

Her heart is racing. It would be better, she thinks, if the fact that he was A was out in the open, if this game of cat and mouse wasn’t hidden behind pleasantries and facades.

She nods. “Yeah,” she says.

“Good,” he replies, and steps into the classroom. “You know, I’m glad I ran into you,” he says, and she feels ill from nerves. “I wanted to see you after school today, speak to you about your recent performance in class.”

“I told you, I’ll take the grade,” she says.

“This isn’t about one grade, Spencer,” he tells her, and he takes another step forward. “You’re slipping in every area of your academics lately. I’d hate to have to reach out to your parents.”

If he’s A, that’s a veiled threat to expose her recent… enhancement methods to her parents, get her sent to rehab and therapy, force an intervention that makes Aria’s confrontation look like child’s play. If he’s not A, the result will be the same, but it wouldn’t be so planned, so calculated.

God, this is brilliant. She thinks she’s going to go insane.

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll be here.” She breezes out of the classroom as fast as she can.

She meets Hanna and Emily in the bathroom to break about everything.

“So just to be clear, none of us have heard from Aria, right?” Hanna says. “No texts, no calls, no cute but weird animal gifs?”

“Nope,” Spencer and Emily say in unison.

Spencer wants so badly to tell them about A’s picture, but he told her not to tell the others, and he has Aria and she can’t take any risks.

“Okay,” says Hanna. “I’ll drive by her house during my spare. Em, think you can go find Mike in the gym lockers at lunch, ask him if he’s heard from her?”

Emily sighs. “I can’t just go into the boys locker room,” she says.

“Um, of course you can,” says Hanna. “No one’s going to think you’re there to check out the guys.”

“Hanna!” Emily exclaims, and Hanna shoots her a cheeky grin before looking at Spencer.

“Spencer, think you can drop by Hollis after school and see if her dad knows where she is?” she asks.

“Um, I can’t, actually,” Spencer says, trying not to fidget. “I have to meet Fitz after school.”

“Wait, Fitz as in A?” Hanna asks. “You’re meeting him? Why?”

“Um, he threatened to get, you know, the school involved if I didn’t meet with him,” she says, running a hand through her hair. “It’ll be fine. It’s fine.”

“Yeah, it’ll be fine until we find you buried in a ditch somewhere!” says Hanna. “You can’t meet him!”

“What am I supposed to do, Hanna?” Spencer asks. “Let him get my parents involved?”

“You know what, it’s fine,” Emily says. “I can stick around after school and come in with an excuse for you to leave.” She gives Spencer a look that’s only a little apprehensive, as though she thinks Spencer’s some feral animal that’s going to bite her head off. “Text me before you meet him?”

“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Of course.”

She types out the text, but she doesn’t send it. She can’t have Emily interrupting if Ezra’s going to tell her where Aria is.

She knocks on the window to the classroom before going in, and manages to plaster on a bright smile when she pushes open the door.

“Spencer,” says Ezra, and he sounds genuinely pleased to see her. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

“Of course,” she says, and moves forward to the center of the classroom with more confidence than she actually feels, and sits on top of one of the desks. She leaves the door open; Ezra can still close it, if he wants, but there’s no way she’s trapping herself in a room with him.

He does close the door. Her stomach sinks, just a little.

“You’ve always been an exceptional student, Spencer,” he tells her, sitting back down at his desk. “You don’t need me to tell you that. You have more potential than almost anyone else at this school, but I worry that you’ve lost your focus.”

“My focus?” she asks. All she has these days is focus.

He piles some papers together, lines them up perfectly, and then looks up at meets her eyes. “It seems to me, in my… professional opinion, that you’ve lost sight of what’s really important.”

“And what is that?” she responds, voice dark. When he raises an eyebrow, she offers him a sweet smile in return.

After a moment, Ezra leans forward across his desk. “Let’s not pretend that we don’t both know what’s going on here.”

She swallows, and doesn’t respond.

“You’ve been scattered lately. Undisciplined.” He leans back in his chair. “You’ve been preoccupied with the wrong things, things that don’t really matter. Now, I don’t know how you’ve been doing in your other classes, or how your other teachers are feeling about your performance lately, but considering… the unique nature of your situation, I’m willing to overlook your recent lapses.”

He meets her eyes again, and the expression on his face makes her want to shiver. She tightens her hold on the desk, instead.

“But you need to prove to me that you are committed to directing your efforts to the right causes, now,” he says, with a slight stress underlying is words; even if he weren’t A – isn’t A – she’d know there was a second meaning to his words he wanted her to grasp. “Everyone has their distractions, Spencer, and I’m sympathetic to that. But this… diversion of your attention has been going on for too long, and I need to see that you are intent on seeing the subject matter through.”

She swallows.

“If I don’t see progress on your part, Spencer,” he says, and now he’s looking back down at the papers on his desk, “and I mean, evidence of real effort, then I’m going to be forced to bring the matter to another level, and I can’t make any promises about what will happen if this goes official. You understand, don’t you?”

“I understand perfectly,” she breathes out, heart pounding, palms slick with sweat.

He offers her a brilliant smile. “I’m so glad,” he says. “Please, let me know if you have any questions about the paper. Come by anytime.”

She nods at him, and after waiting one more moment to make sure she’s been dismissed, she gets up to walk toward the hallway.

“Oh, and Spencer,” he calls, when she’s at the door. “Word of advice?”

She looks back at him.

“Be careful with that medication of yours I saw this morning,” he tells her, and she gulps. “Even if it’s a legitimate prescription, when you wave it around like that? People might get the wrong idea.”

“Thanks,” she says, breathless, and takes off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	3. the trouble with mona

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Spiders eat flies,” says Hanna, and Mona rolls her eyes again. “They don’t force flies to put on black hoodies and do their dirty work. That’s a crappy metaphor.”  
> “It’s a simile, actually,” Mona tells her.

No one answers the door when Hanna rings at Aria’s house, and there aren’t any lights on in her house; Spencer would probably climb the walls to look inside the window, but that would be a waste of time and Tory Burch boots. She sits in her car, still parked outside Aria’s house, and checks her phone.

Her thumb hovers over Spencer’s number for a moment, but she sighs and doesn’t call. She knows Spencer isn’t speeding any more, but she’s still all strung out like a little kid who got free run of a candy store and an espresso machine at the same time.

It’s been a whole day since any of them have heard from Aria, though, and she’s pretty much positive that it’s not some fluke. If Spencer’s right, and Fitz is A, then they really can’t just wait and hope Aria turns up. Something has to be done.

She checks the time. She’s got thirty minutes left of her spare period, but all she has afterwards is American Government, and, like, she’s seen _Scandal_. She can skip. This is way more important.

They need intel on Fitz, and, Hanna remembers, they know someone who might have been working for him.

She sighs, and calls Mona.

Mona picks up on the third ring. “Hey girlie,” she chirps. “Haven’t heard from you in a while.” Her voice is friendly, but there’s an edge to it.

“Yeah, hey, Mona,” she says. She feels a little bad, but then she resents the fact that she feels bad. She has no reason to. “How are you?”

“Let’s skip the small talk, Han, I can only drag out a bathroom break so long,” Mona replies. “What can I do for you?”

Hanna takes a deep breath. If she leads with the Ezra thing, Mona’s gonna spook. “I need to talk to you about something,” she says. “But not over the phone. Any chance you wanna skip fifth and hit the Brew for low fat vanilla frappuccinos?”

Mona doesn’t respond for a moment, and Hanna holds her breath.

“You know I’m always game for anything that involves eating whipped cream and calling it diet,” she responds, finally. “I’ll meet you in ten.”

Mona’s already at the Brew when Hanna arrives, sitting on the couch in the corner, drinks in hand. “Here you go, doll,” she says, as Hanna walks over to where she’s seated. “Don’t worry, yours has a pump of sugar-free cinnamon in it, too.”

“Thanks,” Hanna says, sitting. She makes a point of sitting in the chair next to Mona, rather than on the couch with her.

“So,” Mona says, and fixes Hanna with an expectant look.

Hanna swallows.

“You’re the one who called this little pow-wow,” Mona tells her, a note of frustration in her voice.

“Yeah, I did,” Hanna says, at last. “Thanks for coming.” She lifts her straw to her lips and takes a long drink; it’s exactly the way she likes it. She sets her drink down and takes a breath.

“Aria’s missing,” she says. “It’s been over a day since any of us have heard from her.”

Mona responds with an exaggerated sigh and a fake smile. “Oh, you know Aria,” she says, voice light. “She’s probably off on some romantic getaway with our favorite English teacher. Did you try calling her boyfriend?” Her expression switches to pretend regret. “Oh, god. Did she not tell you they’re back together?”

“Mona, cut it out,” Hanna says. Mona smirks, offers a little shrug, and takes a sip of her drink. “We both know Aria isn’t off spooning cake into Ezra’s mouth.”

“And why do we know that?” Mona asks.

“Because we know Ezra’s A,” Hanna says, and watches for Mona’s reaction.

It doesn’t disappoint. Mona chokes on her frappucino, coughing for a solid thirty seconds before she seems to be able to breathe again. She throws a nervous look over her shoulder, before leaning across the table to Hanna, the whole cutesy act dropped.

“Don’t say that,” she says, voice low.

“So he is,” Hanna says. She feels like there’s a packed nightclub dancing on top of her chest, her heart is beating so fast. “Don’t front, Mona, you know he is. We know you’ve been helping him.”

Mona sits up, straight as a rod, and smooths down her skirt. She looks like a deer ready to run as soon as the headlights are off of her.

She needs to act fact. She reaches across the table and grabs Mona’s hand.

“Hey, Mona, I’m not accusing you of anything, okay?” Hanna says, and tries to make her voice soft and gentle, like she’s talking to Emily or Aria. “I get it. You can’t always say no to A, I’m not mad. But if you know anything about what he’s done with Aria, you have to tell me.”

Mona takes a breath. She looks like she’s centering herself. “I don’t know anything about what’s happened to Aria,” she says. “I swear it.”

“Do you know where Ezra was yesterday?” Hanna asks. “Early evening or so?”

Mona blinks, eyes wide.

“That’s the last time we really heard from Aria,” Hanna continues, but Mona has a look in her eye.

“You know what would go really well with these drinks?” she says. “Cheese fries. Come on, we can take my car.”

“What–” Hanna starts to say, and then she realizes what Mona’s doing. “Oh, yeah. Sure.” Mona stands and walks out of the Brew without looking behind her, and Hanna catches up to her.

She slips into Mona’s car, making sure to have her phone in hand with her thumb poised to call Spencer, in case this is all some elaborate kidnapping scheme.

Mona drives for ten minutes before pulling into an alley and putting the car in park.

“Okay, what is it?” Hanna asks.

Mona lifts her chin, and doesn’t look over at Hanna. “It was me at the zoo yesterday, in the blonde wig,” she says.

“Wait, what?” That meant it was Mona who locked them in the lizard room, who turned off all the lights and set off all the recordings to go at once. “Wait, you’re on the A-Team again?” she asks, and feels hurt despite the fact that she should really know better by now. “I thought you were done with all that after Red Coat tried to burn you alive with the rest of us!”

“And I thought you weren’t accusing me of anything,” Mona returns, an edge in her voice again.

“Fine, sorry,” Hanna says.

Mona sighs. “After you iced me out at school, I went to Fitz,” she says. “I knew there was something up with him. I figured if I could get the jump on him, I’d… have a leg up on Red Coat, having an in with someone like that.”

“Why did you need to be in with Fitz to get a leg up?” Hanna asks.

Mona rolls her eyes. “Insurance, Hanna. Don’t you get it? I thought I was in the clear when I was on the team, but somewhere along the way…” She licks her lips. “I guess I became disposable.”

“Or Red Coat just has it out for you,” Hanna suggests. “She did try to run you over after we got out of the lodge fire.”

“Yes, I’m aware, Hanna,” Mona says, sounding annoyed and maybe a little scared. “I was off the team, I was all alone, I needed insurance, but as soon as you got what you wanted out of me the four of you started icing me out of your group.”

“You were helping us because you wanted insurance?” Hanna asks.

“The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” Mona says, and she reaches up and pulls down the rearview mirror to examine her reflection. “You’ve never had to learn the game, Hanna, you’ve always been able to take allies for granted. But I’d just gotten out of Radley again, and I couldn’t just throw my lot in with Jenna and Shana. I needed someone else.”

“So you went to Fitz,” Hanna says.

Mona nods. “I went to Fitz,” she says. “But… the things he said, I don’t know, he scared me. It was like he was weaving a spider web with words, and I didn’t know I was the fly until I was already trapped in it.”

“Spiders eat flies,” says Hanna, and Mona rolls her eyes again. “They don’t force flies to put on black hoodies and do their dirty work. That’s a crappy metaphor.”

“It’s a simile, actually,” Mona tells her.

Hanna ignores her. “What was he doing when you were at the zoo?” she asks instead.

Mona swallows. “He didn’t tell me,” she says in reply. “Just that he had to check up on something and wouldn’t be back in town in time to meet you.”

“So he left town?” Hanna asks.

“I–I guess,” Mona says. “That’s what it sounded like to me.”

“When did he recruit you back to the A-Team, anyway?” Hanna asks.

Mona looks over at her, finally. “I’m not on the A-Team, Hanna,” she says. “I haven’t put on a single black hoodie, or a pair of gloves. I don’t even know for sure that Fitz is A. All I know is that he wanted information, and I helped him get it.”

“Information?” Hanna asks.

Mona waves her hand. “Pictures, files, records. Going to the zoo was the first real A move he asked me to do.”

“So wait, you’re not sure he’s A?”

“I haven’t seen him in a hoodie, no,” says Mona, “so I’m not positive. But it’s my best bet right now.”

Hanna rubs her forehead. “Why are you helping him if he’s A? A tried to kill you!”

“Red Coat tried to kill me,” Mona corrects.

Hanna looks at her. “Wait, you don’t think they’re working together?”

“I don’t know, Hanna!” Mona’s voice raises so much it’s almost a shout. “I don’t know what I think anymore. All I know is that I don’t know nearly as much as I thought I did, okay?”

Hanna swallows, feeling like her skin is on fire and her head is full of drums. She sits back against the seat, and takes a deep breath before looking back at Mona. “Look, will you help us find Aria?” she asks. “If Fitz is A, and A took her, she could be in real trouble.”

Mona meets her eyes for a long moment. “Okay,” she says, after what feels like a bajillion years. “I’ll help.”

The first thing she does is call Mike, and Hanna just, just manages not to make a comment on how weird it is that they’re… whatever they are, now.

“Mike,” Mona says, when he picks up. “Hey! How are you?” She giggles. “I loved the movie,” she says. “That twist at the end? I usually think I’m pretty good at mysteries, but that took me totally by surprise.”

Hanna gestures for her to get to the freaking point. Mona answers with an exasperated look.

“You know, I can’t do tonight, but I think I’m all clear for tomorrow,” she says. “And this time, I get to pick. I know a good movie or two myself, you know.” She laughs. “Seven is perfect. I can grab takeout from Rive Gauche? No, it’s on me, you paid last time! I’m a modern woman.”

She raises her eyebrows at Hanna, as though to say, _be patient_.

“I can’t wait,” she says. “Yeah. Me too. Oh, wait – sorry, one last thing. Did Aria stay home sick today? She was supposed to be on my team for a history thing, but she wasn’t in class.”

Her eyebrows narrow. “Hmm. Well, if you see her, tell her I’m happy to share my notes. See you tomorrow!” She giggles again. “No, you hang up. No – okay, okay, fine. Goodnight.”

She hangs up, and looks over at Hanna.

“Did that really need to take that long?” Hanna asks.

Mona sighs. “Unlike some people, Hanna, I happen to know that there are better ways to get information than bulldozing my way through a conversation.” She drops her phone in her purse. “He hasn’t seen Aria, or heard from her. Doesn’t seem like she’s been in the house.”

“So what now?” Hanna asks.

Mona raises an eyebrow. “Now,” she says, and shifts the car into drive, her lips curling into a smirk, “we find out where Fitz was last night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Hope you're enjoying!


	4. shadows full of doubt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ever since Spencer first suggested that Ezra was Board Shorts, Emily’s had a queasy feeling in her stomach that won’t go away.

Ever since Spencer first suggested that Ezra was Board Shorts, Emily’s had a queasy feeling in her stomach that won’t go away.

It was one thing when Ali’s nameless, endless parade of Cape May suitors were just that; nameless, sinister, too old for her. She remembers how ill she felt when she found out about Ian, when they first found the video, but then she’d thought he’d killed Ali, too, that he was her murderer and also maybe A.

This was different. This was Ezra. And Ali was still running, still hiding, still scared.

She keeps imagining them kissing, imagining Ali giggling over his boysenberry pie, Ali posing for him for all the pictures they found in Ravenswood. There’s an endless slideshow in her mind and she can’t move past it, no matter how hard she tries.

“ _I thought I knew, but I was wrong,”_ Ali had said, when Emily had asked her who was after her.

Had she thought it was Ezra, and then found out it wasn’t? Had she thought it was someone else, and then started to suspect Ezra? It has to be the latter, Emily thinks; there’s no way Ali would have let Aria date A for over a year, not if she really was visiting them and looking out for them as Red Coat, or – _in_ a red coat, at least. Ali would have left a clue, or done something, to tip Aria off or to break them up.

Emily has to believe that.

She pulls up to Hanna’s house, turns off the car, then checks her phone. Hanna’s SOS text was fifteen minutes ago, and she’d started driving maybe five minutes later, but it felt like seconds. She shouldn’t drive when she’s this distracted. She takes off her seatbelt, but she doesn’t get out of the car until she sees Spencer’s car pulling up behind her.

“Hey,” she says, when she gets out of the car. “I take it you haven’t made any progress?”

“Progress?” Spencer asks. She seems skittish; maybe it’s withdrawal, or maybe there’s something else going on.

Emily raises an eyebrow. “On finding Aria?”

Spencer offers her a tight-lipped smile. “Nope,” she says.

They walk up to Hanna’s door together and ring the bell. Hanna opens the door a crack, and looks relieved when it’s them. “Thank god you’re here,” she says, opening the door all the way, and Emily and Spencer walk in.

“So what’s going–“ Emily starts to say, and then stops dead at the entrance to the kitchen, in which Mona – freaking Mona – is seated.

Rage flares up in her. It’s her knee-jerk reaction to Mona’s smug little face these days. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says. “What is she doing here?”

Mona lifts her chin. “I’m here to help you find Aria,” she replies, with a little smile. “Since it seems like you lot managed to lose her.”

Emily opens her mouth to speak, and Hanna holds out a hand, like Emily is a dog she needs to tame. “Play nice,” she says.

Emily closes her mouth and crosses her arms.

Spencer looks between all three of them. “Well?” she asks. “Do you know something, then?”

Mona sighs. “Fitz was out of town when Aria went missing,” she says.

“So, what, you’re saying Fitz didn’t take her?” Emily asks, heart still pounding.

Mona gives her an even look. “No, I’m saying that Aria was out of town when he took her,” she replies. “Do you have any idea where she might have been?”

“Not with her dad in Syracuse, clearly,” Hanna mutters.

“Wait,” Spencer says. She holds up a finger as though shushing someone, though no one else is talking. “When she got back into town the other night, we saw her with Ezra. Do you think she’s spent all these weekends out of town with him?”

Emily shrugs. “Maybe. I mean, if he has a place somewhere, like in Philly, or–“

Spencer snaps her fingers. “The cabin.”

Hanna blinks. “You mean–“

“Aria told us that cabin belonged to her uncle,” Spencer continues. “A showed up there, we know that – what if that was Ezra’s cabin? What if they’ve been going on romantic getaways there and she’s been lying the whole time?”

Hanna shivers. “Oh my god, do you think they had sex on that couch?”

“ _Hanna_ ,” Emily and Spencer say at the same time.

Mona’s nodding, though. “A cabin. That could be it. Do you remember where it was?”

“Yeah, Emily drove out most of the way there,” Spencer says.

Emily nods. “I could probably find it again.”

“Great,” says Mona, and jumps up from her chair. “I call shotgun.”

She walks to the kitchen entrance, then pauses, and looks back at them.

“Wait, now?” Emily asks.

Mona shrugs. “I’m sorry, do you have something better to do than looking for your potentially kidnapped friend? Because if you do, I could definitely come up with places I’d rather be.”

Hanna looks over at her. After a moment, Emily sighs.

“Fine,” she says. “But just to be clear, Mona, you can sit in the back.”

Mona rolls her eyes and saunters out of the room.

They drive in relative silence, which suits Emily just fine, considering that the alternative is conversing with Mona. She parks within view of the cabin, but not right next to it, and then Hanna jumps out of the car.

“Hanna!” Emily shouts, getting out of the car and scrambling after her. “What are you doing?”

“Getting our friend back?” Hanna answers, not looking over at Emily.

“You can’t just go right in!” Emily tells her. “That might be A’s lair!”

“Yeah, and Aria’s trapped in it!” Hanna turns around, finally, and faces her.

“Look, if Fitz really is A, the worst thing we can do is run in without a plan,” Spencer says. “Let’s just… get the lay of the land first, okay? Stake out for a bit?”

“I can try to hack his security system,” Mona says. Everyone looks over at her, and she rolls her eyes. “Come on. Even if he’s not A, he’s still been stalking you guys. I bet my nicest pair of Louboutins that he’s got cameras wired up every which way in that place.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m with Mona,” Spencer says. “Let’s stick with that plan for now, okay?”

They all pile back in the car. Mona produces a small computer that she’d apparently been carrying around in her bag all day, god knows why, Spencer sniffles and flips through the diary at a robotic pace, and Hanna plays so much Candy Crush that just looking at her screen makes Emily feel nauseous.

She looks out the window, and wonders if Ezra ever brought Ali to this cabin for a weekend getaway.

She wonders when Alison realized Ezra was going to kill her, or try to, at least, when she started putting the pieces in motion to not die. She remembers the Halloween before Ali disappeared, when Ali arranged to fake being attacked to make sure the rest of the girls would be there for her when someone tried to kill her for real.

And then they weren’t there, after all, and Ali’s been running, hiding for her life for almost three years.

Or it had all been a game, and Ali’s been playing with them all and hadn’t ever been scared for a second.

Or it was somewhere in between. Maybe Ali had realized someone was going to hurt her, and started lining up human shields to draw enemy fire away from her.

‘ _You were always my favorite_ ,’ Ali had once said to her, and now she knew it had been real, and Ali had kissed her and it had felt like a dream to realize it wasn’t a dream at all.

But she’d followed with ‘ _no one ever loved me as much as you did._ ’

Emily closes her eyes, throat burning.

‘ _She just collected love from other people_ ,’ she’d said to Paige, just the other week. She’d been right. She thinks Ali was gathering love like armor and ammunition all at once, getting ready to fight a war none of them knew was going on, a queen sitting on a throne so high that only she could see the storm clouds in the distance.

She’d been turning them all into soldiers, and she’d made Emily into her lion-heart.

“You didn’t take any more pills, did you, Spencer?” Hanna asks, and Emily tunes into the car again, to Spencer’s sniffling nose and trembling hands. She turns to face the backseat.

Mona’s eyes light up. “You’ve been taking Adderall?” she asks Spencer, sounding almost gleeful.

Spencer’s returning look is scornful. “Don’t pretend you’ve never done it,” she says. Her voice sounds bitter.

“Oh, honey,” Mona replies, and grins like the Cheshire Cat. “Of course I haven’t. Adrenalized hyperreality, remember?”

Spencer rolls her eyes.

“Speaking of,” Mona says, and turns the laptop screen towards them. “I got into the door camera.” She pauses, clearly waiting for something that never comes. “You’re welcome,” she finally says.

“Is there anything on there?” Emily asks.

Mona spins the laptop back towards herself. “It _looks_ like… yep, Aria arrived at the cabin at just around the last time you all say you heard from her. And Ezra –” She pushes a button on the keyboard. “Ezra showed up a few minutes later.”

“Does it show Aria leaving?” Spencer asks.

Mona types a few more things. “Not out this door,” she says, and then, “oh.”

“Oh?” Hanna says. “What does ‘oh’ mean, Mona?”

“Jackpot,” Mona says, and turns the computer around again.

It’s what looks like a backdoor to the cabin, and what is definitely Aria, looking scared and scattered, running out. A minute later, Ezra follows, looking downright malevolent. “Aria!” he calls.

“Oh my god,” she hears herself say.

“The feed blacks out after that,” Mona says. “Either the cameras were turned off, or the footage has been deleted.”

“But that’s proof,” Emily says. “That’s proof.”

“Oh my god, Fitz took Aria,” Hanna says, and her face screws up like she’s going to throw up. “Oh my god.”

“We don’t have proof of that,” Mona says. “What we do know for a fact is that Ezra’s the last person we know of who saw Aria before she went missing.”

Hanna closes her eyes. “This is like the night Ali went missing all over again.”

Mona fixes a sharp gaze on her, and then her face relaxes. “There hasn’t been any sign of movement from the house since we got here,” she says, and Emily almost questions that before realizing that _of course_ Mona was watching the house and hacking at the same time. “I think it’s safe to take a closer look. Em, want to check it out?”

Emily tries not to recoil at the nickname. “Hard pass,” she says. “I have a bad history with cabins in the woods.”

“Mmm, that’s right, Nate,” Mona says. Emily wants to turn around and smack the smirk off her face.

“Fine, whatever, I can do it,” Hanna says.

She scouts the house for about ten minutes before coming back. “Nothing,” she says. “No lights, no TV, no anything.”

“Did you check inside?” Mona asks, like a patient mother reminding her child of her chores.

Hanna scoffs. “Yeah, like I’m going inside the creepy murder cabin by myself.”

They all go in. It’s empty; there’s no sign that anyone’s been in there today at all. Spencer almost trips over a spot on a carpet, and she thinks Hanna would have commented that Spencer seemed like she was tweaking again except that when Mona kicked the rug over, there was a trapdoor in the floor.

They go down all together.

It’s empty; it looks _stripped_ empty, so bare there’s no way there wasn’t something there that was taken away. The floors are just cement and bare, the walls are rough but clean white, and it smells like someone went to a juice shop and cleaned it with rubbing alcohol.

“What’s that?” Hanna asks, and Emily follows her gaze over to the corner of the room. Something’s glinting on the floor.

She crosses over to it, and kneels down to pick up a gigantic golden earring.

Only Aria would ever own something like that.

“Guys, Aria was here,” she says, and stands, slowly. She holds out the earring like a token.

“Yup, that’d be Aria’s,” Hanna says, and picks it up out of Emily’s hand.

“She must have taken it off,” Spencer says, sounding almost manic, almost _excited_. “As a hint, to leave for us to find–“

“Great,” Emily says, feeling furious at everyone. “That’s just great, Spence.” She swallows. “So where is she now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you're enjoying the story so far.


	5. all about ali

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra bashed Ali over the head and dumped her into the ground and left her to choke on dirt and drown under cement.
> 
> Aria lets out a slow sob, and feels tears burning behind her eyes. She’s shaking all over.

The room she’s in is cozy, softly lit by a few lamps, and totally closed off from the outside world, but Aria still feels cold and damp to the bone.

After that first, awful night in the cabin basement, huddled up in the corner on the hard cement floor, Ezra had brought her to what seemed to be a little motel room, except without so much as a window. There’s a bed with an outdated floral comforter on it, and an old, tattered couch that looks like it belongs in someone’s grandmother’s house.

She hadn’t gotten any sleep in the basement, but she manages to drift in and out of sleep that second night, despite the awful red glow from the TV cable box – which is connected to approximately three local channels and offers her no information of any interest. The walls are all wood, and there’s a generic painting of a lake next to the bed. The analog clock shows the wrong time, and since there’s no natural light, she’s basically just working on her own internal sense of time.

She thinks it’s mid-morning when Ezra comes in, two coffees in hand.

“Dry soy cap,” he says, handing her the drink. She takes it, but doesn’t drink from it, and scoots away from him when he sits next to her on the couch.

“You got me coffee?” she asks. She throws the words out there like an insult, but there’s a tremor she can’t quite get out of her voice.

“Please, Aria, I’m not a complete monster,” he says, and takes a sip from his drink. “And I don’t really care whether or not you drink it, so if you don’t you’re depriving yourself for no reason.”

She still doesn’t drink. “So what, how long are you just going to keep me in here?”

“That remains to be seen,” he answers.

“Remains until what?” she snaps. “What do you _want_?”

He raises an eyebrow of her. “Have you not read a single message I’ve sent you girls over the past month, Aria? I thought I’d made myself pretty clear.”

She knows Ezra’s A, but she still feels like she doesn’t _know_ Ezra is _A_ , that Ezra was the one sending them all the messages, that he – god, he locked Emily in that box in Ravenswood, didn’t he? She wants to throw up.

“Alison,” she says.

He inclines his head towards her. “So you were paying attention.”

It has to be some sick cosmic joke. She thought he was the great love of her _life_ and all he wanted the whole time was her not-dead best friend.

“Why?” she asks. “Because you think you got her pregnant?”

“I did get her pregnant,” Ezra replies.

“And you think she has some secret kid somewhere?” Aria responds. She wasn’t angry when he walked in, just scared, but in the space of a second she’s gone from zero to a hundred, and she feels like her blood is running cold enough to burn.

“I already told you, Aria, I don’t know what she did with the child after she had it.” He takes another drink of his coffee. “At the time, I thought she was dead.”

“You thought you killed her!” The words feel like knives, carving their way up out Aria’s mouth, and spitting them out at him is like spitting out her own blood, but she can’t stop herself.

“Yes, Aria, I thought I’d killed her,” Ezra says. He sounds impatient, but not alarmed, or ashamed, or – and he thought he’d murdered Alison.

“Why would you try to kill her if you thought she was _pregnant_ with your baby?” Aria asks. Her eyes sting, but she tries as hard as she can not to let tears fall.

Ezra takes his time answering, drinking more coffee, setting it down with care. “For curiosity’s sake,” he begins, and then turns to her, “what would you do if you thought you got a girl just shy of fifteen pregnant?”

“I–“ Aria says, and then she thinks about the fact that Alison is over a whole month older than her, that if Ali had still been fourteen when she’d met Ezra, this had been going on for months and months before she disappeared. “I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be sick enough to be with a fifteen-year-old in the first place!”

“You should have thought of that before you started sleeping with your high school teacher,” Ezra replies.

Aria shudders, violently, spilling coffee on herself.

“See, if you’d drank some of that, that wouldn’t have happened,” Ezra says, voice mild.

Aria swallows. “Why are you here?” she asks.

“Ah. Right.” Ezra reaches into his bag, and pulls out a photograph. She takes it with shaking hands.

It’s Ali, in her Vivian wig and her red coat, in the middle of a street, looking young and alone and like she’s sporting what Aria thinks is a poorly concealed bump around her abdomen. The photo looks like it’s taken from above, from a window. It makes Aria go cold, just looking at it.

“Why are you showing me this?” she asks. Her voice is so low she doesn’t recognize it.

“This photo was taken about two months after Alison went missing,” he says. “I found it on a hard drive that belonged to the NAT club, but I don’t know which members took it, or knew of its existence.” He takes a long, loaded pause. “Do you recognize anything, anything at all, that might place where the photo was taken?”

“No,” she says, hearing the shocked inflection in her voice.

“I hope you aren’t lying to me, Aria,” Ezra says, and there’s an undertone to his voice that makes her want to squirm.

“Of course I’m not,” she says, scoffing at him. She meets his probing gaze with her fiercest look. “I was living in Iceland then, remember? I have no idea where this is.”

Except, of course, she does.

She knows exactly where the photo was taken, because Alison is standing in the middle of the exact view from her father’s apartment in Syracuse.

She hands the photo back to Ezra in a dismissive gesture. “Sorry your little coffee run turned out to be for nothing,” she says.

“Oh, don’t be,” Ezra says, standing. “It wasn’t.” He waves the photo. “There are plenty more where this one came from. You might end up being more helpful with some of those. You’d really be better off cooperating.”

“Cooperating?” Aria responds. “Even if you do show me something I recognize, why would I tell you? You want to kill one of my _best friends_.”

“I’m not looking for Alison so I can kill her,” Ezra tells her, and walks over to the door of the motel room.

“Why would I ever believe a thing you tell me?” Aria asks him.

Ezra pauses at the door and looks back at her. “You know,” he says, and smiles at her, “I think that might be the first smart thing you’ve ever said to me.”

She hears him locking the door after he leaves.

She lies back on the couch, feeling breathless.

The NAT club – or _someone_ in the NAT club – had access to her dad’s apartment while they were in Iceland.

Alison had been _right outside_ her dad’s apartment, _pregnant_ , with – she’d been there, and someone in the NAT club had known to look for her there – she’s _been_ there – it made no sense but there had to be a reason – and someone in the NAT club had known Ali was alive, but they hadn’t been helping her stay on the run, they’d been watching her, or maybe they’d been doing both –

Had her dad known that Ali was alive?

Her dad had spoken to Ali the night she disappeared. Garrett had seen her dad speak to Ali that night. Garrett had been part of the NAT club – but then so had Ian and he’d seen Ali that night, and Jenna had _thought_ she’d known what had happened to Ali, and how the hell did they have access to her dad’s apartment?

Did her dad have something to do with the NAT club?

Did her dad know Alison was pregnant?

She closes her eyes and rubs at them. Ezra seems so sure that Alison was pregnant with his child, but – how many guys was she involved with that summer? There was Ian, and maybe Wilden, and god knows who else.

Ezra bashed Ali over the head and dumped her into the ground and left her to choke on dirt and drown under cement.

Aria lets out a slow sob, and feels tears burning behind her eyes. She’s shaking all over.

Alison stole NAT club videos and hid them in a storage unit and gave Emily a key. Ali knew the NAT club was coming after her.

_Do you see A?_

_Everywhere I turn. So do you._

Ali had told her. Ali had known. Had Ali known Ezra was going to kill her? Was that why she’d started preparing, leaving clues, offering cryptic statements instead of answers? Would Ali have run away even if he hadn’t tried to kill her that night?

Did she really have a baby after all?

Aria gets up off the couch, wipes at her eyes, and walks over to the mirror, not entirely sure why she’s going.

Her reflection looks the same as it always does, and if she blurs her vision, she’s just long dark hair falling around a pale face, just like Ali in the picture, just like that time Ali’s friend had called her Vivian. If she keeps her eyes like that too long, though, her face becomes distorted, deformed, pink lips too big, jaw too long, eyes like wide black pits sinking into her skull. She blinks twice, and looks at herself again. She recognizes herself, but she feels like her reflection isn’t part of her, somehow.

She wonders what the girl in the mirror is thinking, tries to stare into her own eyes, read her own mind. Is she laughing at her, thinking she’s so stupid, not seeing what’s right in front of her? Is it easier to see what’s real from the other side?

Or is there nothing in the girl in the mirror, just the same pretty face with nothing behind it, not a single thought behind her eyes, a blank slate of a person without a shred of awareness? See no evil, hear no evil, know no evil, she thinks, and suddenly she’s filled to the brim with violent, irrational jealousy – she knows it’s irrational, she’s jealous of her own reflection – but she feels like she’s looking at her own face but it’s not her face, and it’s the same face everyone else sees when they look at her but it’s not, is it, it’s mirrored, everything reversed, a dark shadow, an evil twin, a doppelganger.

Seeing your own doppelganger is a harbinger of death, she remembers, from stories and fairy tales she read in Iceland. They kill you and take over your life. Her reflection seems to smile at her – that means she’s smiling, though, this is her mirror – which one would be the doppelganger? Is it the reflection or is it her? She can’t decide, can’t decide if she wants to walk through the mirror and kill the other girl and take over her life and not have to know what she knows, or if she wants the other girl to come through and kill her. All she knows is that her fingers are twitching and her lungs are burning and she wants to shove her hand through the glass and rip her own face off –

– there’s a lamp on the desk next to her, it’s casting a shadow over her face, in the mirror, she looks split in two, light and dark –

She grabs the lamp, yanking it off the desk, out of the outlet, and throws it into the mirror, shattering it into pieces.

She kneels on the ground, picks up a shard. It’s cracked; when she looks in it, she’s reflected back at herself a dozen times, splintered, fractured.

She doesn’t realize her hands are trembling until she feels a sharp pain on her thumb and realizes she’s cut herself. She drops the shard and looks down at her thumb, at the red beads of blood dancing along the opening in her skin.

She sucks it off and then stands, and walks away from the wreckage, back to the couch, feeling tired and shaken.

She sits down, and then picks up the coffee Ezra brought her and takes a sip. It’s cold, now, and kind of gross.

She finishes it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all enjoy the chapter!


	6. the third girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Give it up, Spence, she hears in her memory, and she feels light as air again, hazy, like she’s back in a long white nightgown, a gothic heroine meeting the monster in the attic. She feels like she can hear the faint strains of Dionne Warwick singing in the background, even though she knows she can’t, and she starts to sway a little, despite herself.

Spencer has no idea where to start looking for Ali, and doesn’t _want_ to find her, doesn’t want to hand her over to A, but can’t just do nothing. She wrote up a list of places she knows Ali’s spotted since she’s gone missing, or is at least pretty sure she’s been spotted: at the hospital, after Hanna’s accident; pulling Emily out of the barn; maybe coming to Spencer to rummage through the bag Jason gave her in the middle of the night; telling Aria to stop drinking the drugged tea Meredith gave her; probably not actually dancing with Spencer in the Radley basement, as clearly as Spencer remembers that; and then in Ravenswood, saving Emily, and then in Rosewood later that night, and then where Emily met up with her in Philly.

That’s all she knows. That’s it.

But she could know a lot more.

She takes three pills from the bottle A gave her, swallows them with water, and pulls her hair back into a ponytail. She pulls open her laptop.

The thing about Adderall, Spencer thinks, is that it doesn’t make her feel high, or like she’s getting some sort of crazy adrenaline rush where she wants to clean her whole house or any of the symptoms people talk about. It makes her feel right – the clouds that always hang heavy over her head seem to part, and she has the laser-focus she’s meant to have, the clarity that makes her feel like, just for once, she isn’t ten pages behind A, but right on track with him. Mona’s comment in the car had been a low blow, but it was right on; Spencer couldn’t count how many times she’d wondered if how she felt on Adderall was how Mona felt all the time. It was like her mind belonged to her, like she was a step ahead of the world rather than racing to catch up with it, like she was standing on the peak of the mountain and could see for hundreds of miles in every direction, the world alit under a brilliant summer sun.

She’s jealous. She shouldn’t be jealous, she hates being jealous, but she is, has been ever since she first heard Mona’s diagnosis, and she’s been angry ever since Mona recruited her to the A team. _I could do this_ , she thought, wearing the hoodie, sitting in the RV that had been converted into a lair. _I’m just as smart as Mona. I’m just as good at Mona. I can play the game just as well as Mona_.

She’ll never stop hating herself for this, but for one, breathless, exhilarated moment, Spencer had been seized by the desire to steal the game.

_An addict will transfer their addictive behaviors to other substances and activities as a way to fulfill the craving_ , she remembers being told, sitting between her parents in a therapist’s office, the first time everyone had realized she had a speeding problem. There had been a moment, sitting in Radley, mind still broken, where she could see a whole future span out ahead of her, could see herself stealing the game, playing the game, winning the game, being a better A then Mona, then Red Coat, then whoever it was who was in charge. There had been a moment where she’d been ready to dive in headfirst.

There had been a lot of moments in Radley where she’d felt like someone had cracked open her brain and poured in something dark, tilting her mind on an axis so the whole world looked different, like whoever had snapped her puppet strings had sewn on new ones so that they could make her follow a different path, make her dance to a different tune–

She slams her laptop shut and brings her hands to her mouth.

_Shit_ , she thinks. She wishes she could blame it on the pills, but they haven’t even kicked in yet.

She grabs her car keys and throws on a jacket and runs outside, jumps in her car, and makes for Radley. On the way, she dials Mona.

“Spencer?” Mona answers.

“Did you ever see Ali when you were in Radley?” Spencer asks, turning onto the main road.

She can almost see Mona making a face. “I’ve already told you, CeCe visited me before they changed my meds and–“

“No,” Spencer says. “No, I know, I mean after.”

“I wasn’t hallucinating after, Spencer,” Mona replies, as though it’s obvious.

“When Toby and I visited Dr. Palmer, he started talking about a blonde girl with a troubled air around her,” Spencer says.

Mona scoffs. “This is the same Dr. Palmer who has crippling dementia, Spencer.”

“Mrs. DiLaurentis is on the board at Radley,” Spencer continues. “CeCe once went to Radley dressed up as Ali. Ali once told Hanna a horror story about Radley. I thought I saw her there, dressed in pajamas.”

“You really are a speed freak, aren’t you?” Mona says, voice derisive.

“Mona, I’m serious,” Spencer says. “It’s perfect. If anyone in Radley ever saw her and told anyone, it would be way easier to believe they were hallucinating than that a dead girl was living in the basements.”

“Because it makes way more sense, Spencer,” Mona says. There’s an edge to her voice, a barely-controlled wildness, something almost manic, and for the first time in a while Spencer remembers that Mona wasn’t institutionalized for just being A; she’d been put in Radley because she was really, actually mentally ill, and she’d really, definitively hallucinated Alison while she was in there.

“Look,” says Spencer, and she takes a deep breath. Maybe we both just hallucinated her the whole time. But you can’t pretend it doesn’t make any sense, okay, and I’m sorry but I don’t hear a better theory coming from you. So are you coming or not?”

It seems to take Mona forever to answer, but she finally does. “I’ll meet you there,” she says. “But it doesn’t mean I think you’re right.”

“We’ll see,” Spencer says, and hangs up, breathless.

Mona pulls into the parking lot about ten minutes after Spencer does, and closes her car door with an authoritative slam.

“Well?” she says, when she reaches Spencer. “Does this wild goose chase of yours have a plan?”

Spencer raises an eyebrow. “You’re the one who taught me how to sneak in and out of Radley,” she says.

Mona responds with a short laugh. “There is that,” she says, and smirks.

They make their way into Radley through that same old broken door Spencer once snuck out of in a black hoodie, and head down to the basement, phone flashlights lit. Mona’s ahead of her on the stairs, and comes to a stop in front of a locked door.

“Since when is this door locked?” Spencer asks.

She means it rhetorically, but Mona scoffs in response. “It’s always been locked,” she replies. “I just left it open for you when you were here. No one else comes down here.”

Spencer rolls her eyes, and a few moments later, Mona gets the door open. She reaches around and tries a light switch, but it doesn’t seem to work, and finally she steps into the room so Spencer can follow in behind her.

“What exactly do you think we’re going to find down here, anyway?” Mona asks.

“I don’t know,” Spencer says, and she forces down the impulse to say something snarky. “Something that proves Ali really was here?” She sidesteps Mona and makes her way down a hallway of exposed brick, holding her arm out in front of her to break cobwebs before she walks into them. She tries to breathe through the dust in her lungs instead of coughing it up – they are breaking in, after all. She makes her way to the room she’d seen Ali in – or hallucinated Ali in, whatever it was – and pauses when she enters.

_Give it up, Spence_ , she hears in her memory, and she feels light as air again, hazy, like she’s back in a long white nightgown, a gothic heroine meeting the monster in the attic. She feels like she can hear the faint strains of Dionne Warwick singing in the background, even though she knows she can’t, and she starts to sway a little, despite herself.

“Did you find anything?” Mona asks, walking in behind her, and Spencer breaks out of her reverie.

“This is where I saw her last time,” Spencer says. She steps forward, further into the room, and looks around.

“Well, judging by the amount of dust in here, no one else has been in here since,” Mona says. She kicks a wooden horse so it starts rocking back and forth, opens a couple of drawers and rifles through some papers, tapping a long, manicured fingernail against the wooden desk, chipping away at old white paint as she does.

Spencer watches her for a moment, then walks over to the crib and pats on the mattress, reaching her arms through the iron bars to do so. She thinks she feels something, so she lifts the mattress, but there’s nothing underneath it.

She sighs, and lets the mattress drop, and then, as it falls, there’s a distinct, clunky sound.

Mona’s head snaps towards her. She’s frowning.

“What was that?” she asks.

“I think there’s something in the mattress,” Spencer replies, and Mona abandons the desk to haul herself up into the crib. Spencer almost offers her a hand, but Mona seems to have no problem, clambering over it in high heels with expertise. She lifts up the mattress and pushes it over the rail to Spencer, who grabs it and lowers it to the floor. Mona climbs back over and then flips the bare mattress over, and feels her way around it until Spencer hears the unmistakable sound of a zipper.

“Ooh la la,” Mona says, but her heart doesn’t seem to be in it. She reaches a hand into the mattress, and Spencer comes to kneel beside her, to make sure she doesn’t slip whatever she finds into her pocket before Spencer can see it.

She pulls out a ziplock bag and opens it, letting the contents drop onto the ground. Spencer grabs what seems to be a passport and flips it to the photo page.

It’s a Vivian Darkbloom passport, and there’s a Vivian driver’s license in there, for good measure. “This was Ali’s,” Spencer says, and shows it to Mona.

Mona’s looking at another passport, though. “So was this,” she says, and shows Spencer a passport with another photo of Ali in it, this one proclaiming her to be Holly Varjak.

Spencer looks at the pile of Ali’s belongings on the floor. More passports, a few burner phones, a little folder – Spencer tears it open, and a bunch of photos slide into her hand. They’re all photos of Ezra – he’s with Aria in some of them, or standing around Rosewood high, or he’s wearing his graduation cap–

–all of these photos were taken after Alison disappeared. She’d bet her life on it.

“Mona, we need to get this stuff out of here,” Spencer says, and shows her the stack of photos. Mona swallows, then nods.

“No wonder she kept this stuff down here,” Mona says, and it sounds like she’s forcing her voice to be light and cheerful. “The three of us are the only people who have been down here in years.”

“Yeah,” Spencer says, but she has a bit of a queasy feeling in her stomach.

They split up their findings 50/50, because really, neither of them trust the other with all of them, and Spencer drives home, feeling jittery, and not just from the comedown from the Adderall. She pulls into her driveway, and then she realizes what it is that’s sitting with her so wrong.

She knows for a fact that somebody else had access to the Radley basement, that someone else had been in the Radley basement this very year, and that someone was Wren Kingston.


	7. the lady from ravenswood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She isn’t just poking the bear; she’s pretty sure she could take him in hand-to-hand combat today.

That morning, Hanna had woken up and decided that she wanted to look like a woman on a mission. She’d put on her favorite high-heeled booties, the ones that belonged on a catwalk but that she could run like a Bond girl in, and leather-paneled skinny jeans that made her feel like a total badass. She’d spent the day glaring people down through her false lashes in the halls. She isn’t just poking the bear; she’s pretty sure she could take him in hand-to-hand combat today.

She hasn’t figured out what mission she’s on yet, but hell, dressing the part can’t hurt on that front.

“So, Spencer,” she says, sliding into her seat at their designated lunch table in the courtyard. “Is there a reason that last time you had a breakdown your hair puffed out like a balloon but this time it just keeps getting flatter? Like, how does that work?”

“Hanna!” says Emily, looking scandalized.

“What? I’m asking for science,” Hanna says. She looks back over at Spencer, who’s raising an eyebrow at her but looks like she wants to laugh. Well, that’s one mission accomplished, at least. Hanna grins back at her.

“Afternoon, ladies,” says Mona, and Hanna looks up to her right to see Mona putting her lunch down at the table in front of Aria’s usual seat.

“Um, what are you doing?” Spencer asks.

Mona rolls her eyes. “You think I don’t know about your lunch time powwows?” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and sits. “You can hate me all you want, Spencer, but as long as we’re looking for Aria, I’m part of the team. Like it or not, you need me at these things, and you know it.”

“Okay, fine,” Emily says. “But if you make a single comment –”

“What are you gonna do, Emily?” Mona asks, a slight bite to her voice. “Decide Aria can rot because I hurt your feelings?”

Emily looks like she’s going to breathe fire, but she doesn’t say anything.

Once the moment of silence has gone on long enough that Hanna thinks it’ll give her gas, she reaches over to Mona’s tray and grabs her bag of potato chips.

“Really, Han?” Mona asks. She’s smiling, though, and Hanna smiles back at her.

“All that salt can’t be good for your adrenalized hibernation, or whatever,” she says.

“Hyperreality,” Spencer corrects.

Hanna ignores her. “I’m doing you a favor, if you think about it,” she says, and pops a chip into her mouth. “Taking one for the team.”

“Oh, of course,” Mona says, and laughs. “You don’t get any enjoyment out of this.”

“This is just as painful for me as it is for you,” Hanna tells her.

Mona’s smile reaches all the way to her eyes, which are shining, and the brick that’s always weighing in Hanna’s chest feels even heavier than usual. This was what it was like, before she found out about Mona last year, as easy breezy as flipping through a copy of _Teen Vogue_.

Thinking about it makes it hard to breathe for a moment, so Hanna pushes it to whatever corner of her mind she keeps all the other things that hurt like getting hit by a car in, and blazes forward. “So what all do you guys think the Grunwald knows, anyway?”

No one responds for a moment, and then Spencer raises an eyebrow. “The Grunwald?” she asks. Her tone is – there’s a word Hanna learned over the summer that describes it perfectly, god – derisive, that’s it, her tone is derisive. Hanna resists the urge to roll her eyes; right, because it’s one thing that their dead friend is alive, flying planes and wearing masks of her own face, but an actual clairvoyant is clearly going too far.

“I mean, she literally pulled Ali out of her own grave,” is what Hanna says instead of any of that. “She might know a little more than she told us about all those secrets she was buried with.”

“That’s very… poetic, Hanna,” Mona says. Her tone is a little condescending and a little admiring.

Hanna does roll her eyes. “I got a 760 on my writing SAT score, bite me.”

“A 760?” Spencer asks.

Hanna slams her hands down on the table. “Oh my god, Spence, our friend is literally kidnapped right now, stop freaking out about university for one freaking second.” She blows a stray lock of hair out of her face. “I’m gonna drive down to Ravenswood after school.”

Mona, Spencer, and Emily all exchange looks; Hanna feels a little like a kid whose parents are trying to decide if she’s old enough for the talk.

“Han,” Emily says, after a moment, “are you sure you want to do that?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Hanna asks. “Because Caleb’s there?”

Emily doesn’t respond, but looks down instead, in a way that clearly means _yes, that’s exactly why._

“You know,” Hanna says, feeling angrier than is really justified, “I’m not just some little girl who can’t handle the fact that her boyfriend left her. I can handle myself. I think I’ve proven that.”

“You have,” Spencer replies, voice quiet. “I’m – we’re sorry.”

“Thank you,” Hanna says. She shoves the food she has left to the corner of her plate, then grabs her tray and stands up. “I don’t think I’m hungry anymore.”

The rest of the day drags on way too long, but within five minutes of the last bell ringing, Hanna’s sitting in her car with her key in the ignition. She checks her reflection – her mascara is perfectly in place and she doesn’t have a stray eyebrow hair in sight. She holds her own gaze until she looks like she’s sure of what she’s doing, and then she turns the key, looks over her shoulder, and pulls out of her parking spot.

She blasts upbeat breakup songs for the entire drive to Ravenswood, and by the time she’s rolling down those creepy streets at that ridiculously low speed limit, she’s feeling like she really is an empowered, independent woman who don’t need no man. She’s got curses under her tongue and a Lily Allen song in her head, and frankly, she doesn’t think any exes or spooky ghosts are a match for that.

It’s just her luck, though, that when she puts the car in park and looks over to the square across the street, Caleb is stranding right there.

She’s considering turning the car back on and speeding away – really, really considering it – and then, like this town really is haunted, she hears Ali’s voice in her mind. _It’s okay if you have to run away, Han_ , Ali’s saying, and Hanna’s heart is racing and there are hot tears pricking at her eyes. _I’m sure someone will find it cute that you’re such a scaredy-cat sooner or later. Well, later, to be honest, but, it’ll happen eventually_.

She swallows, blinks back the mistiness in her eyes, rolls down her windows, and honks.

Caleb looks over, and Hanna waves a hand over her head so there’s no way he can’t see her.

“Hanna?” he mouths, and Hanna rolls up her windows and gets out of her car.

“Hey, stranger,” she says. Her tone is a little flirtier than she meant it to be, so she closes her mouth and thinks about sounding casual and detached. “Funny meeting you here.”

“Hanna, what are you doing in Ravenswood?” Caleb asks.

Hanna raises an eyebrow. “I need to ask the Grunwald a few questions.”

Caleb exhales; his shoulders drop. “Han–”

“We have questions, and we think she has answers,” Hanna says, as forcefully as she can, so there’s no room for objections. “Now, are you gonna help me or not?”

It’s clear that Caleb wants his answer to be ‘not’, which is such a 180 from the Caleb she knows and loves that she thinks _something_ must have happened to him in this freaky little town, but he doesn’t say it, just nods and puts his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “Do you know where to find her?” he asks.

Hanna looks at him like he’s from another planet. “Um, hello, aren’t you the one who lives here now?” she asks. “You tell me where to find her.”

“How would I know where she is?” Caleb asks.

“She’s a witch with weird pale eyes who has visions of teenage girls getting murdered,” Hanna says. “I feel like she doesn’t go unnoticed.”

Caleb is silent for a moment. “Visions of teenage girls getting murdered,” he repeats at last. “Do you think–”

“We’re not an ‘us’ anymore, Caleb, so I don’t think anything,” she tells him. “Can you help me find the Grunwald or not?”

It takes him a few minutes, but apparently he can. He leads her back to that creepy mansion she got trapped in last time she was in this godforsaken town, and lo and behold, the Grunwald is a maid or something there, because of _course_ she is. Creepy old ladies and creepy old houses go together like red nails and cosmo glasses.

“Hanna,” is what the Grunwald says without turning around, the moment Hanna walks into the room. “I was wondering if you’d turn up today. It’s good to see you again.”

“Shouldn’t you actually see me before you say that?” she asks. Caleb shoots her a look like she’s being rude, but she’s not trying to be, she means it. Can the Grunwald see out of the back of her head? Or does she mean her psychic sight?

“Quite,” says the Grunwald, and turns to face Hanna. Her eyes are even paler than they were last time Hanna saw them, if that’s even possible, and she looks washed out like an old photograph. “You look well.”

“You don’t,” Hanna says. “Sorry, but, are you, like, okay?”

“Hanna,” Caleb says, voice tense, but the Grunwald just smiles in that cryptic way of hers.

“Your candor is, as always, refreshing,” she says, and then she moves to an armchair a few feet away, sitting down carefully. “Please,” she says, and extends her hand to gesture to the chair across from her.

Hanna sits. Caleb doesn’t, hovering at her shoulder instead. She thinks he’s trying to come off like a guard dog, but really, it’s more like having a fly in her peripheral vision.

“You have questions for me,” the Grunwald says.

Hanna leans forward. “Last time we were here, you told us that the last time you saw Ali was that night.”

The Grunwald nods.

“Was that true?” Hanna asks.

Again, the Grunwald nods.

Frustration builds in Hanna’s chest. “Okay, by ‘saw’, did you mean in person or in one of your visions?”

The Grunwald’s eyebrows rise; it wouldn’t be that noticeable if her face wasn’t so eerily still the rest of the time. “A perceptive question,” she asks. “You truly are a believer, aren’t you?”

Hanna tilts her head. “I’ve seen weirder things,” she says, and crosses her legs, trying to look a little more authoritative. “Are you gonna answer me or not?”

“I will,” the Grunwald replies. “I spoke the truth to you and your friends: I have not seen Alison since, with my eyes or with my sight.” She turns her head towards the window, but doesn’t look at it; a moment later, she turns her head back towards Hanna. “I have, however, heard her.”

Hanna narrows her eyes. “Like, on a recording? On the phone?”

“Neither,” the Grunwald says. “I’ve heard her in my mind, like a whisper next to my ear that disappears as soon as I turn to see the speaker.”

The Grunwald is silent for a long moment, and Hanna realizes that she’s waiting for Hanna to reply. “And what does she say?” Hanna asks.

“A name,” the Grunwald says. “The same name, again and again, for two years, now.”

Hanna can hear the whirring of the radiator, the creaking of the floorboard under Caleb’s shifting weight, the pounding of her own heart in her throat.

“Well?” she asks, when she can’t handle waiting any longer. “What name is she saying?”

The corner of the Grunwald’s mouth turns up, just a little.

“Charlotte.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, guys, I'm so sorry for how long this update took. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter despite the wait.


	8. woman on the run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you want to find Ali or not?” Hanna asks.  
> The truth is, Emily isn’t sure herself.

“Okay, so none of us know a Charlotte, right?” Spencer asks, pacing back and forth along the rug in Emily’s room. The bags under her eyes seem to have gotten even bigger; Emily would be worried – she is worried – but she doesn’t think any of them are getting much in the way of sleep anymore.

Hanna pops a cheesy puff into her mouth and makes a face. “There was a Charlotte at fat camp,” she says, and then shrugs. “She had a David Archuleta poster above her bunk bed so that he would be the first thing she saw in the morning and the last thing she saw at night.”

“Okay, but –” Emily says, and then pauses as that sinks it. “Wait, David Archuleta? Is it just me–”

“It’s not a gay thing, Em, it’s an eyes thing,” Hanna says, shifting on Emily’s bed so she’s sitting cross-legged.

“Look,” says Spencer, waving a hand in the air, “as… weird as camp Charlotte might be, I think we can cross her out. None of us know a relevant Charlotte, right?”

Nobody speaks for a moment.

“I think that’s a no,” says Mona, reaching into Hanna’s bag of cheesy puffs. Emily still can’t stand the fact that Mona is in her room, sitting on her bed, acting like she wasn’t freaking A in the first place, but she can’t argue that they need her.

“So I guess we have something else to add to Ali’s list of secrets,” Spencer says. There’s an undercurrent of irritation in her voice that stirs something up in Emily’s stomach.

“Hey,” she says, “you don’t know that. Maybe Ali didn’t know this person until after she disappeared. Hanna said the Grunwald didn’t start hearing her until after she pulled her out of her grave.”

Spencer closes her eyes and takes a breath. “Yeah, okay, maybe.”

“Oh my god, Spencer, if you don’t stop pacing I’m going to throw a cheesy puff at you,” Hanna says. Spencer shoots Hanna a look, but stops, and comes to sit next to Emily on the window seat instead. “Thank you,” Hanna says, and then: “look, if anyone’s going to know other mystery people in Ali’s life, it’s gonna be CeCe Drake, right?”

Spencer blinks. “That’s… a really good point, actually.”

Hanna rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to sound so surprised,” she says.

“Sorry,” says Spencer. “But… yeah, I mean, she probably would be our best bet.”

“Maybe, if we knew where she was,” Emily replies. She pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. “Last time I saw her before Ravenswood, she was rushing to get out of town as fast as possible.”

“Yeah, and according to Travis she was last seen somewhere in Maryland,” Hanna says.

“So that’s our next step,” Spencer says, and she sounds both more relaxed and more anxious at the same time, as though having a plan calms her down but something about this plan scares her. “Find CeCe Drake.” She turns to Emily. “You’re the one she opened up to the most,” she says, and Emily feels her heart speed up.

“If calling me Americano counts as opening up to me,” she says. “She’s Red Coat, right? She works for A, she’s not our friend.”

“No, Spencer’s right,” Mona says. “CeCe isn’t going to be found unless she likes the person who’s looking.”

“She helped A try to cut me to pieces in a sawmill!” Emily says.

“Not necessarily,” Mona replies. “Ezra doesn’t trust CeCe, I know that much. And if he is A, and she’s working against him, she might actually help us.”

Spencer looks over at Mona, and they lock gazes for a long moment; Emily doesn’t know what either of them are thinking, but something seems to pass between them, and then Spencer turns back to Emily.

“Em,” she says. “You’re our best chance.”

Emily swallows. “I don’t know if–”

“Do you want to find Ali or not?” Hanna asks.

The truth is, Emily isn’t sure herself.

On one hand, every fiber of her being is desperate to see Ali again, to prove that Ali can trust her, to check yet again and make sure she isn’t a dream. She wants to wrap Ali in a warm blanket and bring her a hot cup of tea and make sure none of the things that go bump in the night can ever touch her again. On the other hand, the thought of seeing Ali again fills her with so much dread that she feels like she’s going to throw up. She wants to know the truth about what happened to Ali, but every answer she gets rattles around in her brain and keeps her up all night, and every time she sees a picture of Ali she seems a little less familiar, like the girl she’s loved and mourned all these years has been a stranger to her the whole time.

“I’ll try to find CeCe,” Emily says at last. The words taste like ash in her mouth.

. . .

It’s hard to pay attention in any of her classes, but even harder in Ezra’s, and Emily has to keep her eyes on her desk because every time she looks up all she can see is Ezra kissing Ali or killing Ali or taking all the pictures of her that were in A’s lair, and it makes her sick.

She rushes out of the classroom the second the bell rings, and her heart is pounding in her head so loudly that she’s all the way around the corner by the time she hears Paige’s voice calling after her.

“Em,” Paige says, when she finally catches up.

“I’m so sorry,” Emily says. Even though Paige was the one doing the running, Emily’s out of breath. “I was – lost in my thoughts.”

“Emily, what’s the matter?” Paige asks. Her voice has a hard edge, but Emily can’t tell if it’s concern or frustration.

“Nothing, I’m just – you know, didn’t sleep well,” she says.

Paige doesn’t speak until Emily finally meets her eyes. “Emily, what’s wrong?” she asks, when Emily does. “Something is, I can tell. You didn’t even wait for Mr. Fitz to give us our assignment –”

Something about hearing Paige call Ezra _Mr. Fitz_ makes Emily feel like there’s a fist around her throat. There are hot tears pricking at her eyes, and she can’t breathe –

“Emily,” Paige says, and her voice is soft now, “what’s going on?”

“I have to get out of here,” Emily chokes out, and takes off for the doors, not looking back to see if Paige is following her or not.

She breaks into a run once she’s outside, and sprints down along the pavement. Her feet are hitting the ground so hard that her teeth rattle, but it feels good – ever since she had to stop swimming she hasn’t gotten to do this, to strain her body enough that her mind shuts off, even for a second.

She stops after two streets, and all but collapses onto a bench, breathing hard and not trying to control it at all. A minute later she hears footsteps, and looks up to see Paige coming down the street.

Paige takes a seat next to her, and Emily breathes out, her whole body feeling like it’s made of lead.

“We think Ezra is A,” she says, the words coming out like a sob, and next to her Paige goes rigid.

“Fitz?” she asks, a slight tremor in her voice. Emily nods. “Oh my god.”

“We found out,” Emily says, and there are a few tears sliding down her cheeks, now, “we – he was with Ali, the summer before…” She swallows down the lump in her throat. “He thought he got her pregnant.”

“He thought – Jesus,” Paige says, and leans forward, arms crossed over her knees, like she can’t sit up straight under the weight of this information. “That’s – oh my god,” Paige says, “and that’s – you think that’s why he killed her?”

For a second, Emily’s tempted to tell Paige everything: that Ali isn’t dead, that Aria’s being held captive, that the whole world feels like it’s going to shatter around her if she so much as breathes wrong. She holds it in, just under her tongue; instead of saying any of it, she presses her lips together and nods.

“What kind of person could do something like that?” Paige asks.

Emily blinks, and then looks up at Paige. “You hate Ali,” she says.

“Yeah, I do,” Paige says, shaking her head like she’s almost at a loss for words, “but… she was fifteen. That’s – that’s sick.”

_She was fifteen._ It had been so obvious, glaring them in the face all along – he’d dated Aria even though she was his student and underage, but they’d thought it was romantic, that age was just a number and it was awful and unfair that the world was trying to keep them apart – god, they’d been so stupid.

“The others – I’m supposed to be looking for CeCe Drake,” Emily says. “We think she knows something about Ali, or what happened, and she’s more likely to talk to me than…”

“Where do we start looking?” Paige asks.

Emily bites her lip. “Why would–” she starts, and then stops herself. “You don’t have to help me,” she says. “What Ali did to you, I mean, why would you…”

Paige is quiet for a long moment. “Look, I was glad Ali was dead,” she says, finally. “Or – I guess I was so glad she was gone I didn’t care. But… if that’s what happened to her? That’s not okay, that’s horrible, and… you shouldn’t have to find out if it’s true by yourself.”

Emily doesn’t know what to say to that. She can’t even think about it, really, so she presses forward. “We heard CeCe was last spotted in Maryland.”

“Do you have her number or anything?” Paige asks.

Emily frowns. “She’s on the run, would she really have the same phone?”

Paige shrugs. “I mean, it’s worth a shot, right?”

Emily considers this for a moment, then pulls out her phone, and scrolls down to CeCe in her contacts. She isn’t sure what to type, but eventually decides to just go with _is this CeCe’s number?_

A few minutes later, her phone buzzes with a reply. _1465 Elm Street._

“It’s an address,” Emily says.

Paige looks at it and frowns. “1465 Elm,” she says, voice contemplative. “Does it mean anything to you?”

Emily shakes her head.

“Maybe that’s where CeCe’s hiding out,” Paige suggests.

“Or it’s a trap,” Emily says.

“Or it’s a trap,” Paige acknowledges. “So what do you want to do?”

Emily thinks for a few minutes, then stands. “Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out,” she says. “You don’t have to–”

“I’m coming,” Paige says, like she can’t believe Emily would suggest otherwise, and stands. “Let’s go while it’s still light out.”

The address, as it turns out, is a rundown old building, guarded by a broken gate, that, according to a plaque, used to be the Joseph Lloyd King School for the Blind. “This isn’t spooky at all,” Paige says, walking over the creaky floorboards. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

No one replies for a long moment, and then, faintly, Emily hears a high-pitched laugh, like a little girl’s.

“Did you hear that?” she asks Paige, who nods. “It sounded like it was coming from upstairs.”

 They make their way up in the direction of the laugh, every step groaning beneath their feet like the staircase is about to give out, and follow a hallway down to a room. It’s full of… baby dolls, and for a second Emily feels like she’s back in that creepy doll hospital in Brookhaven. She hears the laughing sound again, and walks forward to find the source: a doll with blonde hair, wearing a yellow shirt. For a moment she feels sick, sure this is one of A’s traps, and then she picks up the doll and sees that there’s something underneath it.

It’s a photograph of a bar. Emily stares at it, searching. She can’t tell what she’s meant to be looking at, and then, in the corner, she sees it: Alison, wearing a brown wig, sitting next to Ezra on a couch, her legs swung up over his lap, his hand against her lower back.

“Oh my god,” she says, and she thinks she really is going to throw up.

Paige follows her gaze. “Holy shit,” she says. “That’s – that’s proof.”

Hand shaking, Emily turns over the photograph. There’s a date on it, written in a loopy handwriting she doesn’t recognize – handwriting that isn’t A’s. That’s not what makes her blood go cold, though – it’s the date itself.

“This was before Alison’s birthday,” Emily says, bile in her throat.

“What?” says Paige.

Emily swallows. “She – this was taken when Ali was still fourteen.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Paige says.

Emily wants to make a run for the door, but she looks down at the tray where she found the photo, and studies the doll. If CeCe really did leave this for her –

“Can you hold this for a second?” she asks, and hands the picture to Paige. She picks up the doll and turns it around, then grasps the base of its neck and tilts it ever so slightly. The neck opens up, and Paige inhales sharply. Emily reaches in and pulls out a chain with a key at the end, and a folded up piece of paper.

On the note, in the same loopy handwriting, is written: _Jessica DiLaurentis will be out of town this weekend. Take a look in her laundry room. – C.D._

“It is from CeCe,” Emily says softly, and looks down at the key.

“So,” says Paige, a forced lightness to her voice, “how does breaking and entering sound for Saturday date night?”

Despite herself, Emily smiles, and holds up the key. “Technically,” she says, “we won’t be breaking anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading! Hope you're all enjoying the fic – I'd love to hear your thoughts on the story so far and on where it's headed!
> 
> Before anyone asks, this isn't a ship-centric fic. Some people will end up together, some people won't, and some people will end up single, but that's not the point of the fic. There's still quite a bit left to go, so I hope you guys will sit back and enjoy the ride.


	9. behind unlocked doors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She needs to be angry because Spencer isn’t here to get angry and start burning down the world looking for answers; because Emily isn’t here to roar like a lioness and stand so tall and strong Aria feels like nothing can touch her; because Hanna isn’t here to make some totally inappropriate joke and walk on forward into the warzone like she’s never even thought of standing still. She needs to be angry for herself, because there’s no one here to be angry for her.

They’d only stayed at the motel a few days before Ezra had moved her again; Aria doesn’t know whether he’s just trying to keep her on the move or if he actually has a permanent destination in mind. She hopes it’s the former – she doesn’t want to imagine what the latter would look like.

He has her in what she’d guess is a basement apartment of some sort. There are no windows, and the walls feel like cement, but there’s more space, more rooms. He usually keeps her locked in a bare bones bedroom, but there’s a little sitting room he’s brought her to a couple of times, and she’s seen a hallway leading off of it with a few doors along the way. Even though she’s mostly locked up in her bedroom – _the_ bedroom, it’s not hers, it doesn’t belong to her and she doesn’t belong in it and she can’t let herself get used to it – he’s left her alone in the sitting room just long enough that she’s pretty sure this place is secured to the point that her getting loose inside of it isn’t a major concern.

She’s lost weight, since – all of this. It hasn’t even been a full week, but her clothes are looser, her face looks sunken in, and she already has to fasten her bra one clasp tighter than she did before. Ezra’s brought her the clothes she had packed for their weekend away – god, their weekend away, she tries not to think about that, about them, about what they were, or what she thought they were. Whenever she does, she feels like that little girl who tried to use big words she’d seen in books during class only to pronounce them wrong and get laughed at until she ran to the bathroom in tears, stomach churning. She feels small and stupid and sick with herself, and she’s been eating so little that whenever she does heave over the toilet, nothing comes up.

She spends most of her days curled up in the corner of the bed against the cement wall, making herself as small as she can. She’s always been tiny, but her feelings have always felt bigger than her body, like they spilled out all around her and flooded every room in her house; now, she holds them as deep inside of her as she can, tries to crush them so they fit, as though they’re in danger anywhere else, as though Ezra could grab a handful and wrench them until she screamed.

She closes her eyes and thinks of her friends, tries to pull them around her like a force field, and she remembers something Emily had said, back at the beginning of the year, when they’d realized there was a new A for the first time.

“ _I am way more angry than I am scared now_.”

Aria had asked Emily if she could borrow some of that, and Emily had replied “anytime.” If there was ever a time to borrow that, it was now, it was this. She’s cold and afraid and heartbroken, and she has so much to be angry about, _everything_ to be angry about, and she can barely even summon it up right now. She’s only really managed it when Ezra’s been _there_ , when she’s been looking at his _face_ , and some dormant beast inside her chest just unfurls and growls and wants to rip the world apart. It feels better to be angry. She _needs_ to be angry.

She needs to be angry because Spencer isn’t here to get angry and start burning down the world looking for answers; because Emily isn’t here to roar like a lioness and stand so tall and strong Aria feels like nothing can touch her; because Hanna isn’t here to make some totally inappropriate joke and walk on forward into the warzone like she’s never even thought of standing still. She needs to be angry for herself, because there’s no one here to be angry for her.

And god, somewhere inside of her she’s too scared to touch, she’s _furious_.

She gets to her feet, because she thinks standing will feel stronger than sitting still, and paces, back and forth, like Spencer does when she’s thinking hard. She’s being held captive by A. That means some of A’s things are here, feet away from her, things that may have answers or leads or hints about – about anything. On the other side of that door there’s something she can use.

She hasn’t been bothering to check if the door is locked or not because she’s been too scared to do anything regardless – but she’s trying not to be scared. She’s pretending she’s not scared, at least – that’s what Ali always did, played the part of who she wanted to be, acted it so convincingly she came to believe it herself. Aria can do that.

She turns the doorknob: it’s unlocked. She step out into the hall.

Last year, the girls had all agreed she was the best liar of the group. She doesn’t know if that’s true anymore, after everything they’ve been through since, but she does know how to sell a lie.

“Ezra?” she calls, louder than she would if she were really looking for him. If he does appear, she has her next lines on the tip of her tongue, a few trembling attempts to speak before getting across that she’s wondering if she can have any advil, but he doesn’t appear, and she doesn’t hear any kind of response. “Ezra?” she calls again, stepping out further into the hall, walking towards the sitting room.

If he’s there – if he’s there and might run into her, it isn’t worth sneaking around, trying not to get caught. If he’s not there, she’s sure he has cameras. The only way she can do this is if she’s absolutely convincing in her cover story. She reaches a hand back to massage the top of her neck and walks into the sitting room, looking from side to side. “Ezra?” she asks, quieter this time, adding more confusion to her inflection. She pauses, as though deliberating whether to go back to her room and wait or not, and then squeezes her eyes shut briefly.

She makes her way down a hallway, and opens the first door she reaches. She suspects it’s a linen closet, and as it turns out, it is. It’s empty. She frowns, but carries on. There’s a bathroom next, and she goes in even though she won’t find anything useful there because that’s where she’d look if she really wanted advil. She opens the medicine cabinet and the drawer under the sink. There are a few items there – a comb, a toothbrush, some toothpaste, a bottle of mouthwash – but luckily there’s no advil.

She looks out the doorway and across the hall. There’s a closed door. She swallows, and makes her way over to it.

She goes out of her way to knock on the door, to open it slowly and gently, as though half-expecting Ezra to be there even though she’s pretty sure he’d have heard her call for him no matter what.

It’s his study – if you could call it that.

The blown up pictures of Alison from the lair in Ravenswood are stacked together leaning up against the wall, not hung up but visible nonetheless, and a few of the timelines that had been on boards in Ravenswood are tacked up on the walls. She only looks for a moment, then moves to the desk – she’s supposed to be looking for advil, and the girls already have pictures of everything they found in Ravenswood.

There are three computers on the desk, but they’re all off. In front of the computers are piles of paper. They’re ledgers, like the ones Spencer found at the old lair – but the one on the top of the pile is dated 2010.

She looks up to every corner of the ceiling, but she doesn’t see any cameras – there could be hidden ones, but maybe, just maybe, Ezra doesn’t see the need to record himself and so doesn’t have any here. Either way, she has to be fast.

She looks at the ledger again, not even daring to run her finger down along it, just turning the page with the corner of her fingernail – and on the third page, she sees the name _Darren Wilden_ next to _09/03/2010_.

September 3rd, 2010. She knows that date like the back of her hand – it was the date of Alison’s funeral. It was also the date Wilden introduced himself as the lead detective on Ali’s homicide investigation.

She scans down the page. There are payments to Wilden every two weeks – hefty payments, the kind of money she didn’t know Ezra had until she found out about his family – the only break in payments is from mid-October to early December of that year, and it only takes Aria a moment to remember that those dates correspond exactly with Wilden’s suspension and reinstatement – and the payments continue through the end of the year. Aria doesn’t want to ruffle through anything else, but takes a look at the first page of the 2011 ledger and, sure enough, there’s Wilden, every two weeks all the way down the page, and _god,_ Wilden’s been on Ezra’s payroll since the start. God.

Every time Wilden cornered them, threw accusations at them, interrogated them without an adult present flashes through Aria’s mind, underscored by a pulse running throughout, a beat: _Ezra. Ezra. Ezra_.  

Wilden had been at Cape May that summer. Wilden – they’d thought Wilden had gotten Ali pregnant. Ali _had_ gotten pregnant. Was –

She forces her brain to stop and leaves the room, closes the door behind her, and even though every nerve in her body wants to run back to her room and think this over, she keeps going, down the hallway to the kitchen and through the kitchen cupboards and through the pantry. She finds advil – she doesn’t have a headache, but she pops two and pours herself a glass of water, then heads back to her room, glass in hand. She shuts the door and lies down on her bed, curling up and closing her eyes. She could be trying to sleep, for all Ezra knows.

She isn’t, of course. She’s thinking about the fact that Ezra believes he got Ali pregnant even though Ali was sleeping with other guys that summer, including Wilden, and about the fact that Ezra’s been paying Wilden off since Ali’s funeral, and about the fact that both Wilden and Ezra were hooking up with Ali in Cape May, and she’s thinking _god, Ali, what did you get yourself into? What did you get us all into?_

Ezra has to know that they thought Wilden was the father, which means he has to know that Wilden isn’t – that’s something Aria can try to bring up in conversation. She can’t ask him if he and Wilden met at Cape May or beforehand, or what exactly he was paying Wilden to do, or how much Wilden knew about Ezra and what Ezra had done and what Ezra was doing, because then he’ll know that she saw something she shouldn’t have. And Wilden’s dead – there are no answers to be gotten from him.

Wilden was the Queen of Hearts on the Halloween Train, she remembers. He’d been one of the people who put her in that coffin, who killed Garrett – and Ezra had shown up afterwards, out of the blue, for no good reason at all. Had – god, had Ezra put Wilden up to that, or had Wilden gone rogue? Had Ezra killed Garrett, after all? Or had he killed Wilden for going rogue and hurting her?

_You’re an idiot_ , she thinks to herself. All of this, and she’s still trying to tell herself that Ezra’s acting in her defense, that he’s her knight in shining armor, even while knowing that his armor is a black hoodie. All that she’s learned, all that she’s seen, and she’s still trying to dream herself a happily ever after.

If Ezra killed Wilden for going rogue, it had nothing to do with Aria. Nothing Ezra has ever done has been about Aria, not once. She has to remember that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading! As always, please let me know what you think.
> 
> If anyone's interested, the fic now has an official playlist over on 8tracks, which you can find at https://8tracks.com/fellowshipofthefalls/all-things-truly-wicked. There are individual character mixes forthcoming, so keep an eye out for those.


	10. the girl who cheated herself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When your mind is running as fast as hers is, everything that makes you human feels like an iron ball. She’s trapped inside her body; if it weren’t for this pile of skin and bones, she’d be transcendent.

Spencer taps her nails against her white ceramic coffee mug, her rhythm so methodical that it probably sounds like the seconds hand of an old clock to the handful of other patrons in the diner. The coffee’s more bitter than she usually likes, but it’s strong, and strong is exactly what she needs.

She’s given up on putting sugar in her coffee. Coffee’s not a treat, a dessert, something to enjoy like she deserves any delicacies; it’s fuel, it’s gasoline, it’s as necessary to her as water. She drinks it black and as strong as she can brew it, and has it whenever she can get it, even though everything tastes like mud these days. Adderall will do that to you, after a while, turn your senses into deadweights that just hold you back from your thoughts. When your mind is running as fast as hers is, everything that makes you human feels like an iron ball. She’s trapped inside her body; if it weren’t for this pile of skin and bones, she’d be transcendent.

She wonders if this is how Mona feels all the time; if this is what adrenalized hyperreality feels like. Or maybe this is how Mona feels when she’s medicated. After all, Mona has a personality disorder that basically turns her into a god, and right now Spencer feels like she’d be celestial if she weren’t bound and shackled by the fact that she’s real.

She checks her watch. A – Ezra – had given her the instant stuff, but she’s not supposed to take more for another two hours. Part of her knows how ridiculous that is, that she’s abusing amphetamines every hour of every day but still sticking to the recommended wait time, but she’s an analyst before she’s an addict. Giving herself cardiac arrest would ruin everything, and there are too many people depending on her to let her self-destruction come at their expense.

She takes another sip of her coffee, and then remembers the reason she’d checked her watch in the first place, and looks again. Eddie Lamb is five minutes late. There could be a million reasons for that, she knows, but with Eddie there’s always the risk that he’s bailing. She takes a deep breath, cups her hands around her mug, and forces herself not to keep checking the time every thirty seconds. Across the diner, the waitress gestures to her with the coffee pot, and Spencer smiles and nods.

It’s three minutes, thirty-one seconds, and one more refill before Eddie Lamb walks through the front door of the diner. He’s in jeans and a blue hoodie, not a Radley uniform, which is kind of surreal to Spencer, but she puts it out of her mind.

“It’s good to see you,” she says, as Eddie slides into the booth across from her. “How have you been?”

Eddie raises his eyebrows. “Spencer, we both know you didn’t ask me to meet you so we could catch up,” he says.

Spencer swallows. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I – I really don’t like putting you in this position, so thank you for coming. I really appreciate it.”

“Let’s just make this quick, okay?” Eddie shoots a look over his shoulder, then back at her. “You said you wanted to ask me about something.”

“Yeah,” Spencer says, and bites her lip. She can’t straight up ask Eddie if he saw Ali at Radley after she disappeared: _hey, did you see a dead girl at the mental hospital after she was murdered?_ “I wanted to ask you about someone you might have seen around Radley,” she goes with instead. “Someone who might have been there before I was.”

Eddie gives a long sigh, a pained look on his face. “You’re talking about your sister,” he says.

The world spins, and Spencer thinks she’s going to fall even though she’s sitting down.

“Melissa?” she asks. She’s grasping the coffee mug so tightly her knuckles must be white.

It must have sounded like a statement, not a question, because Eddie just nods. “Yeah, that’s right. Melissa.”

Spencer doesn’t say anything, just keeps her lips pressed together in a tight smile.

“I didn’t know who she was until the first time she visited you at Radley,” Eddie says. “I never signed her in for visiting hours, or read her nametag.”

“When was the last time you saw her before she visited me?” Spencer asks. She keeps her tone as even as she can.

Eddie thinks for a second. “She was in over the summer, once or twice,” he says. “Before that, I hadn’t seen her in a few years.”

Spencer’s heart is pounding. “How many years?” she asks. She’s trying her best not to let her desperation seep into her voice, but she can’t quite keep it out.

“Two, maybe?” Eddie replies.

“So in 2009 or so?” Spencer realizes her leg is bouncing under the table, and forces herself to sit still.

Eddie shoots a look over his shoulder. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“How often was she there?” Spencer asks.

Eddie’s starting to get anxious; he’s tapping his foot, and he keeps looking around, like he expects someone to show up with a gun to his head. “I don’t know, pretty often,” he says. “Most weekends, I guess? She usually had a book bag with her. I can’t remember that well, it was years ago.”

“That’s okay,” she says, reaching her hand out across the table to lay it on top of his. “Eddie, please. Is there anything else you can tell me? It’s really important.”

Eddie looks into her eyes for a long moment. “What kind of trouble are you in, Spencer?” he asks.

Spencer swallows. “We both know you don’t want me to answer that,” she says.

Eddie doesn’t respond to that, but the guilt in his eyes is confirmation enough. He moves his hand out from under hers and checks his watch. “I should get going,” he says, and moves to leave.

“Wait!” Spencer’s voice cracks a little, and Eddie turns back to look at her. “When you saw Melissa over the summer,” she says, “was Wren Kingston already working at Radley?”

“Dr. Kingston?” Eddie asks. He sounds genuinely taken aback. “Of course he was. Your sister’s the one who asked him to take the job in the first place.”

. . .

“Okay, first of all,” Hanna says, “even if Melissa did tell Wren to work at Radley, how the hell would Eddie Lamb know?”

They’re sitting around Spencer’s kitchen counter – everyone’s there, even Mona – with an open pizza box in front of them that no one’s touched. Spencer’s parents aren’t home, which makes her house the best place to meet up, and the nice thing about being Spencer Hastings is that no parent is going to tell their kid they can’t go over to her house to study.

“I don’t know, Han, but Eddie wouldn’t make something like that up,” Spencer replies. “Maybe he overheard them talking one day. It doesn’t matter, what matters is –”

“Yes, it matters!” Hanna says. “Or, if Melissa was there all the time this summer, why didn’t I see her when I was there?” She looks over at Mona. “Why didn’t you?”

Mona’s lip twitches, just slightly. “I don’t know what I did or didn’t see this summer, remember?” she asks.

For a split second, Hanna looks… devastated, but then it passes so quickly Spencer might have just imagined it. “Whatever,” she says. “What are we gonna do about the picture Emily found? That’s our first priority, right?”

“There’s nothing we can do with it,” Spencer says. “You don’t think we’ve learned our lesson about trying to take evidence to the police?”

“Yeah, but this is different.” Hanna rips a slice of pizza from the pie and puts it on her plate. “I mean, it’s proof that he was hooking up with Ali when she was fourteen. It’s enough to put him behind bars long enough to save Aria.”

“What’s to stop Fitz from telling them that she lied about her name and age, and that he didn’t even realize the blonde girl on all those missing posters he saw two years later was the same girl he met on a drunken trip to Cape May?” Mona asks. “The police will buy whatever excuse he comes up with. Face it, Han, the cops will always believe people like him over people like us.”

It’s the truth; it makes Spencer feel dirty all over, but it’s a truth she’s learned a thousand times over, a truth she’s been choking on ever since Ian Thomas walked into the very room she’s sitting in right now and announced that he’d married her sister, and made sure her house would never feel safe again, not even almost a year after she’d watched him being lowered into the earth. The police would never be on their side, and she could never count on them to protect her or any of her friends. It was naïve and stupid to hope for anything different.

The girls leave after another hour of not making any decisions, and the whole time Spencer is trying not to check her watch, because she _knows_ she can take another pill now but she can’t do it in front of them, especially not now that they’re on high alert. She goes for the bottle the second she’s alone in the house. She takes a shower, quick and ice cold, and by the time she gets out she can already feel her mind hardening into something sharp and sure.

Five minutes later, she’s on the phone with American Airlines. “Yes, this is Melissa Hastings,” she says in a cool, smooth voice. “Yes, I’m terribly sorry to bother you. My fiancé and I have different dates in our calendars for my upcoming flight, and I was hoping you could – yes, exactly, thank you so much.” She rattles off Melissa’s passport and frequent flyer numbers by heart, and waits as the employee on the other end types them into the system.

“Oh, perfect, that’s exactly what I thought,” she says when the representative comes back with a date, while on her laptop she’s pulling up her calendar and typing it in. “Yes, thank you so much. Have a good evening.” She hangs up.

Melissa gets back in less than a week. She didn’t know Melissa had any plans to come back that soon – she doesn’t think anyone in her family knows, but she has it confirmed. When she’d called, she’d expected to hear that Melissa had booked a flight towards the end of December, and that the earliest she’d get to talk to Melissa in person about Radley would be around Christmas. This is better than she could have anticipated.

_Or something’s wrong_ , a little voice at the back of her head says. _Why else would she book a flight back early and not tell anyone?_

And then that dark part of her brain that she hates more than anything says: _maybe she’s in on the game._

She refuses to believe it, that Melissa’s part of what’s being done to them, to Aria, to Alison – but she remembers Melissa believing Ian over Spencer, when Spencer had tried to tell her what Ian was. She’d taken Ian’s side over Spencer’s, she’d defended what Ian had done to Alison; for all Spencer knows, she would take Ezra’s side, too. Melissa hates Alison, she always has, and she’s always had her secrets.

If Aria’s great love can be the one behind the game, Spencer’s sister can be in on it. She can’t trust anyone, can’t assume the best of anyone, can’t expect anyone to be on her side. Melissa brought Ian into their home, even though he’d kissed Spencer when she was barely fifteen, even though Spencer had insisted that he couldn’t be trusted and begged Melissa to believe her, just once. Melissa might have been behind the fire at the lodge, might have been the other Queen of Hearts on the Halloween train.

Melissa might have been out to hurt her, all this time, and Spencer had ignored the signs because she wanted so desperately to believe her sister loved her, despite everything between them.

She should never have let herself be so stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading, guys – I really hope you're enjoying so far.
> 
> For anyone who's interested, the Aria playlist for this fic is also up now: https://8tracks.com/fellowshipofthefalls/a-r-i-a . If you check it out, let me know what you think!


	11. the lost summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Um, duh,” Hanna replies. “I’m not an idiot.”
> 
> Mona sighs like she’s at the end of her rope. “Of course you’re not an idiot, Hanna, you just spend a lot of time pretending you’re not as smart as you really are.”
> 
> Hanna doesn’t have much in the way of a response to that, so she just sips at her coffee.

It’s way too early for anyone with even the tiniest shred of self-respect to be up on a Saturday, Hanna thinks, tapping her nails against the counter of the Brew as she waits for her order. If Spencer were here, she’d have some snarky comment to make about how it might not feel that way if Hanna didn’t need a full two hours to get ready before she even left the house, but Spencer’s priorities when it comes to sleep are whack, so whatever. But even though Spencer doesn’t want to hear any accusations about Melissa and Emily’s way out of her league chasing CeCe and Mona says that Wilden’s proof the police will take Ezra’s side over theirs no matter what, they’re all in agreement that everything comes back to Ali’s trips to Cape May that summer, so here Hanna is, in heels before nine and caffeinating for yet another freaking road trip.  

“Two mochas for Hanna,” says the barista, after what feels like a hundred years. Hanna barely remembers to thank the poor guy before grabbing the drinks and heading back to the table.

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Mona says, reaching up to take her drink. Mona doesn’t look like the lack of sleep’s bothering her at all, but then Mona doesn’t look like a mastermind who cuts down entire trees and runs people under with cars in her spare time, either, so go figure.

Hanna flops down into her seat and sighs. “You know Cape May is like, two hours from here, right?” she asks. “There’s no reason we couldn’t have left at a reasonable hour. One that ends in PM.”

“The early bird gets the worm, Han,” Mona says. She picks her phone up from the table and looks at it, then glances over Hanna’s shoulder and freezes.

Hanna narrows her eyes at Mona, then looks around to see what has her all deer-in-the-headlights. It’s Fitz, all relaxed and teacher-y, walking in the front door and placing an order.

Hanna spins back around and leans towards Mona. “Oh my god, do you think he’s getting Aria coffee?”

“Shut up,” Mona whispers between clenched teeth.

There’s something so wrong about Fitz walking around town like he doesn’t have a care in the world while the rest of them run around like mice in a trap. Hanna takes a drink of her mocha, and then turns back around.

“Hey, Mr. Fitz!” she calls out, smiling.

Fitz turns around, and looks taken aback. _Good_ , Hanna thinks. “Miss Marin,” he says, with a smile that’s a little confused but mostly entertained. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Hanna snorts. “Just because Spencer’s blood-caffeine content is high enough to power a small country doesn’t mean she’s the only one with a coffee addiction,” she says.

Fitz laughs politely. “I just meant I’ve never seen you here this early on a Saturday,” he says.

Hanna raises her eyebrows. “Well, you can blame my lack of beauty sleep on your assigned readings,” she says. “Like _Jekyll and Hyde_? Every time I close my eyes I’m scared I’m gonna turn into some freaky serial killer in the middle of the night.”

Fitz smiles at her, all patronizing. “As long as you haven’t taken any mysterious potions lately, I think you’re safe,” he says. “After all, Dr. Jekyll decided to become Mr. Hyde in the first place; he might have lost control later, but he’s the one who set himself on that path.”

“Yeah, but he changed his mind,” Hanna says. “He didn’t want to be that person anymore.”

“Maybe so,” Fitz replies, a strange expression crossing his face, “but he’d already sealed his fate.”

Hanna can tell that this is quickly turning into a conversation about something else entirely – on another day, in another pair of shoes, and with another coffee date, she might go with it, but that day isn’t today, so she steers it back by scrunching up her nose and saying: “Fate? Is this book, like, a religious thing? ‘Cause I know my mom’s dating a pastor and all, but –”

Fitz laughs. “No bible study required for the test, I promise,” he says. His gaze flits over to Mona for a moment, and then back to Hanna. “Though I think if you gave it a read, you might find a few things of particular interest.”

Hanna makes a show of perking up. “Oh, yeah, like that water into wine trick?” she asks. “Yeah. God, if the Bible can teach me that one I’ll definitely put it on my reading list.”

Fitz’s answering smile is annoyingly vapid. “As your teacher, I won’t comment on that one,” he replies. “I’ll leave you two to your coffee; enjoy the rest of your morning.”

As soon as he’s left the Brew, Mona rounds on Hanna. “What was that supposed to be?” she asks.

Hanna rolls her eyes. “Um, acting like a bimbo so Fitz doesn’t think we’re up to anything?”

“That’s–” Mona pauses, and narrows her eyes.  “That was a smart tactic, actually,” she says.

“Um, duh,” Hanna replies. “I’m not an idiot.”

Mona sighs like she’s at the end of her rope. “Of course you’re not an idiot, Hanna, you just spend a lot of time pretending you’re not as smart as you really are.”

Hanna doesn’t have much in the way of a response to that, so she just sips at her coffee.

A few minutes later, they’re headed out to the car (“I should drive, Han, I’m a better driver–“ “You ran me over with a _car_ once.”) and Hanna’s comfortably in the driver’s seat as they head out of Rosewood.

“Is it just me,” Hanna muses, a few minutes after they’ve gotten onto the interstate, “or does the air literally feel lighter as soon as you leave Rosewood?” She glances over at Mona. “Don’t give me some sciencey explanation of why that’s not possible.”

“I was going to say that it’s not just you,” Mona says. “Eyes on the road, though, Han.”

“If I always keep my eyes on the road, how am I gonna check my blind spots?” Hanna asks.

Spencer would think Hanna was serious and freak out, but Mona just rolls her eyes, like she’s babysitting a kid who gets a kick out of being deliberately insufferable. “Your blind spots are still on the road,” she says.

Hanna tries not to laugh. “I was being metaphorical,” she says instead.

“That’s–” Mona shoots her some serious side eye, and then looks up. Hanna thinks she’s going over Hanna’s words in her head. After a moment, she shrugs. “Yeah, I guess you were.”

Hanna giggles. “I know what I mean, Mona,” she says.  

“Yeah, you do,” Mona says, a small smile spreading across her face. “I’ve always admired that about you; few people can that say that about themselves.”

Hanna giggles again, a little uncomfortably this time. “Geez, someone’s really on Team Hanna today.”

It takes Mona a moment to reply. “I’m always on Team Hanna,” she says at last, looking straight ahead. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

There are a lot of things Hanna could say to that, about Mona being A, about Mona working for the new A, about how you can’t be on her team if you’re not on her friends’ team too, but they all taste like bile in her mouth, so she swallows them all down. “Well,” she says, forcing as much energy and optimism into her voice as she can, “good thing, ‘cause Team Hanna gets results and doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

She cranks up the radio. They’re too far to pick up the Rosewood station’s signal, but it’s not long before Hanna finds a Top 40 station that sounds clear as day. She bounces in her seat, singing along.

Mona raises an eyebrow, looking like she’s suppressing a laugh. “Just make sure all that bopping around doesn’t make you lose control of the vehicle.”

“Hey,” Hanna says, grinning, “do you remember that time we took Noel’s car for a joyride and blasted Soulja Boy on repeat the whole time?”

Mona bursts into surprised laughter. “Oh my god, you didn’t even have your license yet.”

“I kept trying to do the dance and you kept shrieking for me not to let go of the wheel,” Hanna says, and then pauses. “Wait, were we drunk?”

“Are you kidding, Han, I would never have let you drink and drive,” Mona replies matter-of-factly. “We didn’t get hammered until after we bartered with Noel for a bottle of vodka in exchange for his car back.”

Hanna laughs, her chest feeling lighter than it has in ages. “You still have the song on your iPod, right?” she asks, and moments later Mona’s hooking up her phone to the car speaker, and the music’s blasting and they’re singing along and Mona’s dancing in the passenger seat and things feel almost _right_ for the first time a year.

It’s a little before noon by the time they drive past the sign telling them that they’re officially in Cape May. “So, what now?” Hanna asks. “I take it you have a plan?”

“Of course I have a plan,” Mona says, in a tone that means _who do you think I am?_ “Take the next left.”

Hanna does so. “Where are we headed?”

“There’s a private walk-in clinic with a reputation for discretion not far from where Ali’s family was renting,” Mona replies. “I have a list of every medical establishment in the region in order of likelihood that Alison would go there, but I have a strong feeling that this would be the one.”

Hanna frowns. “Why would Ali have been at a walk-in clinic?”

“Because,” Mona says, sounding a little exasperated, “she thought she was pregnant.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t,” Hanna says. “I mean, isn’t that what you told Spencer?”

Mona takes a deep breath. “She wrote in her diary that it was a false alarm,” she says. “But you know as well as I do that she wrote all of her diary in code, and filled it with half-truths and misdirects. I’m not so sure that wasn’t one of them anymore.”

Hanna exhales.

“Right at that corner,” Mona says, nodding in the direction of the coming intersection. “I see a parking spot.”

Hanna parks, then closes her eyes. “Okay,” she says, after a moment. “So what’s the plan?”

“I need to get into their system to look for records of Ali coming in that summer,” Mona says.

“So, what, are you gonna bluescarf it?” Hanna asks.

“Bluesnarf,” Mona corrects. “And no, unfortunately, because this place hasn’t gone digital yet. We need to look through physical files.”

“Okay,” Hanna says, waiting for Mona to carry on.

She isn’t disappointed. “They keep all their files in a room in the back of the building – original, I know – so we’re just going to break in and find Alison’s.”

“Just gonna break in?” Hanna asks.

Mona turns to her and raises an eyebrow. “Please, hon, like you haven’t done your fair share of sneaking into places you’re not allowed to be. It’ll be a piece of cake.”

And it is – Mona places a call to the desk, and they walk in and straight back while the receptionist is answering the phone. They pass a few doors that Hanna can’t tell apart, but Mona knows the moment she reaches the one she’s looking for, gives the doorknob a try, and finds that it’s unlocked.

“So much for tight security,” Hanna mutters under her breath.

She follows Mona into the filing room, and Mona locates the right section in seconds.

“God, there are so many,” Hanna says.

“Where’s that can-do attitude, Han?” Mona asks. She grabs a few massive folders and hands them to Hanna. “You get started on these,” she says, before grabbing even more files for herself.

It only takes them ten minutes – ten rushed, anxious minutes – of searching before Hanna sees a record for a Vivian Darkbloom. “This is her,” she says, and Mona abandons her stack to come sit beside Hanna.

“June 22nd, 2009,” Mona reads. She scans through the page. “The doctor confirmed that she was six weeks pregnant.”

“That early?” Hanna asks. “Wait, when did she get pregnant?”

Mona thinks for a moment. “Probably Memorial Day weekend,” she says. “How about that.” She looks back down to the files. “Is there anything else?”

“Like what?”

“Like a record of an abortion,” Mona replies. “Nothing under Vivian, but she could have used another name –”

“Mona, we don’t have forever,” Hanna says. “Do they even do abortions here?”

Mona ignores her, going through file after file, searching almost frantically, until Hanna follows up with “Mona, come _on_! Even if she had one, would it really be here?”

Mona looks up at her. “Maybe not,” she says, a little defeated. “Fine. Help me put these away.”

Hanna does. A few minutes later, they leave, without drawing any attention to themselves, and Hanna can’t help but wonder how many people’s attention Ali was desperately trying not to draw, back when she was here, the summer everything went wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading!


	12. one girl's confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily’s been wearing the chain CeCe left them around her neck since she found it, the key tucked inside her shirt; she pulls it out now and rubs it between her thumb and forefinger, like if the shape of it starts to feels right in her hand, it won’t feel like she’s doing anything wrong when she uses it.

It’s nearly dusk when Emily and Paige pull up into the Hastings driveway. It makes more sense to park at Spencer’s than at the DiLaurentis house, in case any neighbors look out and wonder why a strange car is in the driveway while Mrs. D is out of town. They sit in the car for a moment after Emily’s turned off the ignition. Emily’s been wearing the chain CeCe left them around her neck since she found it, the key tucked inside her shirt; she pulls it out now and rubs it between her thumb and forefinger, like if the shape of it starts to feels right in her hand, it won’t feel like she’s doing anything wrong when she uses it.

“Well?” Paige says at last, with forced cheer in her voice. “No time like the present, right?”

Emily takes a deep breath and pushes open the car door.

She lived in this house just a few weeks ago, after the incident with the car. It shouldn’t feel so foreign to walk along that lawn and up those stairs, and yet it does, now. She doesn’t know if it’s guilt or fear of what she’ll find.

She unlocks the door with ease, and steps into the foyer, Paige right behind her.

“So this where Alison lived, huh?” Paige asks, once the door is closed behind them.

“Yeah,” Emily says, rubbing her hands against her thighs as she walks forward. “Yeah, this is it.”

“Huh,” Paige says again. “It’s… I don’t really know if it’s what I expected, honestly.”

“It’s hard to expect anything, when it comes to Ali,” Emily says. There’s a tinge of bitterness in her voice that she didn’t intend to come out. She’s sure Paige picks up on it, but she doesn’t comment.

This house is haunted, for Emily. She has two ghosts that live within its walls. She sees a flash of blonde hair around every corner; she hears Maya’s giggle down every hallway. It’s wrong, being with the third girl she’s loved in the house of the two that she’s lost.

“Alright, let’s get looking,” she says, half to hear the sound of her own voice, something real to drown out everything that isn’t.

“Okay,” says Paige, and then pauses. “Um, where? The note said the laundry room, right?”

Part of Emily wants to go alone, doesn’t want Paige to see whatever there is to find, but she doesn’t know if being alone will make it worse, if – she doesn’t know what there is to find, if it’s a tiny hint or a massive piece of information, if it’ll give away to Paige that Ali’s alive or just tell them more about what led to her disappearance, if she’s getting herself worked up for nothing or if she’s still unprepared for what she’s going to learn. 

She doesn’t know how to say any of this to Paige, how to even start, so instead she just says “this way” and leads them down the hallway.

Mrs. D’s laundry room is exactly how Emily remembers it. It’s eerie, actually. Even her craft jars are all in the same order they were before they moved. She swallows.

“Any idea what we’re looking for?” Paige asks.

Emily shakes her head. “None. Just… anything, I guess.”

They start rummaging through her jars and drawers, through her shelves, being careful to put everything back exactly as they found it before moving on to something else.  

“God, there would something so fitting about Mrs. DiLaurentis keeping family secrets in her craft kits,” Paige says, rifling through a jar of acrylic paint tubes.

It’s true, too true to be funny to Emily. She thinks about all of Ali’s hiding places and then wishes she hadn’t, because thinking about her hiding places means thinking about the fact that Ali had to have hiding places, even before A, and – and it’s the most selfish thought in the world, and she knows so much better now, but it always stings somewhere small and vulnerable that Ali never asked her for help, never trusted her with what was happening. It’s the same part of her that aches when she remembers the way Ali looked at her after Spencer showed up at their secret meeting, that wants to throw herself on the floor and plead that she’ll do anything, everything, to prove she can be trusted.

She shuts the drawers she’d been looking through a little too loudly, trying to startle herself out of her thoughts, and walks over to the wine rack. She’d always thought it strange that Mrs. D kept a wine rack in her craft and laundry room. She’d always thought a lot of things about Mrs. D’s drinking, but she’d never said anything. At the time, she’d been worried her mother would work herself into a state and stop letting Emily go over to Ali’s; now, she wonders whether Mrs. D’s drinking kept her from noticing what was going on with Ali or started so she didn’t have to think about any of the things happening under her own roof.

She remembers a day, the summer before everything, when she’d come over to help Ali with the scrapbooking project her mother was forcing her to take part in. Emily and Ali had been sitting on the floor, Emily showing Ali how to use the glue gun properly, and Mrs. DiLaurentis had been working the cork out of a particularly uncooperative bottle of wine.

_“You know, if you didn’t keep those stashed in here, you could use the nice corkscrew and not that plastic crap,” Ali had said, scowling up at her mother._

_“Ali, don’t look away from the glue gun.” Emily’s voice had been verging on panic, and she’d grasped Ali’s wrist firmly. “You could burn yourself.”_

_“Listen to your friend, Alison,” Mrs. DiLaurentis had said. She’d given the corkscrew one final tug and the cork had come out at last. “And if I didn’t keep these stashed in here, as you so eloquently put it, your brother and your father would have finished all my vintages years ago.”_

_She’d poured herself a glass, and turned to Ali, a strange expression somewhere between stern and gentle on her face. “But a man will never go into a women’s space willingly. That’s why they make the best hiding places. Remember that, Alison.”_

Emily kneels down to the lowest shelf on the wine rack, the one so far down that she’d never naturally reach for it, let alone Jason or Mr. DiLaurentis from their six-foot-plus vantage points, and slides out a bottle of wine, then another. She reaches her hand into the cubicle and feels around, careful not to jostle the bottles too hard, and then feels that one of the labels is thicker than the others. She gingerly pulls the bottle out and slides a finger inside the label, then pulls out a couple of bent photographs.

“What did you find?” Paige asks. Emily had forgotten she wasn’t alone; her hand tightens around the bottle so she doesn’t drop it.

“Pictures,” she says, and Paige kneels down next to her. Emily turns the photos face-up.

The first photo is older, faded, fraying at the edges. It’s two little girls – two little twin girls, actually – with long blonde hair, in matching dresses. They can’t be more than six or seven years old. Emily turns the photo over, but there’s nothing written on the back.

The other photo is of a baby with tufts of blonde hair, dressed in a little green onesie, staring out at Emily with blue eyes she knows all too well, eyes she hopes Paige doesn’t recognize, eyes that make her hand tremble as she turns over the photo.

_Charles, 6 months._

“Do you know what these mean?” Paige asks.

_Ali must have had the baby,_ Emily’s mind screams at her, like a thousand alarms blaring at once. _She must have had the baby, and her mom must have known, and this must be the baby –_

“No,” Emily says. She thinks her voice is even. “No, but – I should take these back to the girls. Maybe one of them knows.”

She doesn’t know when she’ll show them to the girls – she will eventually, she _will_ , she isn’t going to keep this from them – but right now she can barely think straight, let alone think straight while carrying on a lie.

She drops Paige off at home, and then pulls over a few blocks away, when she’s sure she’s out of sight, and takes deep, shuddering breaths. She doesn’t know what this means, doesn’t know which of Ali’s secrets she should be trying to connect the photos to, and she’s trying to get all of her racing thoughts into some semblance of order – and then her phone vibrates.

It’s a text from CeCe Drake.

Emily’s hands are still shaking, but she opens it as quickly as she can. It’s an address; when she looks it up, her phone tells her that it’s a diner called the Two Crows, just on the outskirts of town. She doesn’t know if there’s another clue there, or if CeCe’s there herself, but she looks up the directions and drives.

She pulls into the lot of a rundown building on the side of the road, with only the red neon lights spelling out the word ‘DINER’ to indicate that she’s in the right place. It’s dodgy and unsafe and she should probably know better than to go alone, but if A were going to kill her, it wouldn’t be like this, so she puts the car in park, turns off the ignition, and steps out into the night.

She crosses the lot and walks into the diner. There are a few people in the place; she scans the room for a moment before her gaze falls on a familiar blonde, sitting at a booth in the corner.

She walks over to CeCe, and slides into the seat across from her. CeCe looks up at her and smirks.

“Long time no see, Americano,” she says, the same flirty rasp to her voice as always, that same way of tilting her chin just like Ali that always sets Emily’s heart racing. “Glad you showed.”

Emily doesn’t respond, just takes CeCe in. She’s in a dark jacket, and her hair and makeup are done to perfection, but her nail polish is chipped; it’s the slightest crack in the façade, but enough to give away that all is not well in the life of CeCe Drake.

“You know you’re the one who texted me first, right?” CeCe asks, with a sort of bored sarcasm.

Emily just studies her, not saying a word.

CeCe rolls her eyes. “Look, are you going to ask me questions or not?”

“You’re the one who’s been in hiding for weeks and then decided to ask me to meet you tonight,” Emily says.

CeCe takes a deep breath. “God, I forgot how infuriating you all can be,” she says, and then meets Emily’s eyes and leans forward. “You found the photos, right?”

“The twins and the baby?” Emily asks.

“Yeah.” CeCe nods, like she’s prompting her.

Emily takes a second to decide what to say; she’s not sure what all CeCe knows, and she’s afraid of giving anything away. “What do you know?”

“I know that you know Ali’s alive, too, so stop walking on eggshells about it,” CeCe says.

Emily swallows. “The baby,” she asks. “Charles. Is that – is that Ali’s baby?”

“No,” CeCe says, and pauses for a moment, then sits back. “It’s me.”

Emily’s mind spins for a second. “Why would Ali’s mom have a picture of you as a baby hidden in her laundry room?”

“Because she’s my mother, too,” CeCe replies.

Emily feels like the ground’s been swept out from under her; it doesn’t make any sense, but it makes total sense, and the entire world is shifting and re-orienting itself around this revelation.

“Ali’s your sister,” she says, at last. “How – where –”

“My real name is Charlotte DiLaurentis,” CeCe says, and then, with a slightly annoyed sigh, adds: “Charles, at birth. But, to my father’s _horror_ , it was pretty clear early on that I wasn’t really a boy, so he convinced my mom to send me to Radley so they could ‘fix’ me. They told Jason that I was just his imaginary friend, and they never told Ali I existed in the first place.”

“Oh my god,” says Emily. She doesn’t know what else she can say. CeCe’s – Charlotte’s – her tone is wry and biting and dismissive, but what she’s just revealed is more than Emily knows how to respond to or process. She’d thought she had it bad, when her mom had been horrified that her daughter was gay; she can’t even imagine that kind of rejection.  

CeCe examines her for a moment, then scoffs. “Oh my god, don’t give me that look full of pity,” she says. “I don’t need anyone’s pity. I didn’t ask you to meet me so you’d feel _bad_ for me, I asked you to meet me because there are things you need to know if you’re going to stand a chance in this game.”

“Why were you helping A in Ravenswood?” Emily asks. “I almost died.”

CeCe – _Charlotte,_ she didn’t say her name used to be Charlotte or that she used to go by it, she said it is her name, present tense – makes a pained expression. “Look, I actually feel bad about that,” she says. “I didn’t know that was his plan. I was trying to convince Fitz I was working for him to find out what he was up to – I didn’t know what he was gonna do that night.”

Emily takes a deep breath. “Did you know Ali was going to be there that night? In the red coat?” she asks.

Charlotte lifts her chin, and offers Emily a calculated stare. “Maybe.”

“I thought you were going to answer my questions,” Emily asks.

Charlotte smirks. “The ones I can,” she says. “As for the others? Wait for it, Americano.”

“Who was the first red coat?” Emily asks. “What is red coat? How did that start?”

“You mean the night Ali’s grave was dug up?” Charlotte asks. “That was me, that night. I was helping A by then, but I knew it wasn’t Ali’s body in that grave.”

“When did you know Ali was really alive?” Emily asks, heart suddenly pounding.

Charlotte sighs. “A long time before you did,” she replies.

_Charlotte_ , whispers a small voice in Emily’s head, and suddenly everything slams into her mind like a freight train. _The Grunwald had been hearing Ali call for Charlotte._ “You’re –” She stops herself. “When did you tell Ali?” she asks instead.

Charlotte gazes at her for a moment, and then a smile spreads across her face. “You are a lot smarter than you get credit for, aren’t you?” she asks. “After. I told her after, when I found out she was alive.”

She isn’t going to get anything more specific, she can tell, so she moves on – and then something else occurs to her. “You dated Jason,” she says. “You – Jason’s your brother, and you dated him.”

Charlotte takes a deep breath, like she’s been waiting for this question.

“Why?” Emily asks.

“Because of that stupid club,” Charlotte replies, an edge to her voice.

“The NAT club?”

Charlotte laughs. “Their Latin translation wasn’t even correct,” she says, shaking her head. “God. Yeah, the freaking NAT club. Jason was – he started that club. I knew he was doing something to hurt Ali, and the best way to protect her was to have an in with him so I’d know what he and his friends were up to.”

Emily doesn’t reply to that, just sits there, absorbing. Charlotte looks down at her wrist, and exhales. “Look, I can’t stay much longer,” she says. “It’s not safe.”

“Just – just tell me one more thing,” Emily says, and then finally, _finally_ , she asks: “What side are you on?”

Charlotte looks at her as though she’s stunned by the question. “Ali’s side,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ve always been on Ali’s side.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about how long it took me to get this chapter up! Thanks so much for your patience, and I hope you all enjoy.


	13. strangers in the light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She hates feeling like she’s dressing up for him. She hates that he’s choosing her outfits, like she’s a little doll he gets to play dress up with. Her clothes have always been her strength, her armor, her art, hers, and now she doesn’t even have that anymore.

She sits in her bed with her knees curled up to her chest – Aria’s given up on trying not to think of it as hers by now, petty mental rebellion isn’t going to make any difference – and stares across the room at the static on the TV, hoping that if she watches it for long enough she’ll fall into a trance, hoping that the white noise will keep her from suffocating under the weight of hour after hour of silence.

Ezra hasn’t moved her, at least not yet, but he did bring in an old TV for her. It doesn’t have any signal, of course; it has a built-in VHS player, and Ezra left her with a small stack of old movies. She doesn’t know if he’s trying to butter her up so she’ll give him answers or just providing her with some source of entertainment because he’s sick of her sulking, but it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want to watch old movies. Old movies are what Ezra said he saw in Aria but really saw in Alison, the sophistication and mystique of leading ladies in a time gone by, the glamour of Grace Kelly, the coy smile of Audrey Hepburn. She’s never been what he wanted. She’s not his leading lady; she’s not even his Lolita. She’s a replacement for the real thing.

She didn’t bother to turn on the lamp or the naked lightbulb on the ceiling today, which means the room is only illuminated by the glow of the crackling static of the television screen. She doesn’t have a clock, and it’s not like there are any windows, so she has no idea what time of day it is.

She hears a door slam. It sounds like a heavy door; it might be the entrance to this basement, or bunker, or whatever the hell it is. She hears footsteps pounding, getting louder and louder, and then moments later her door swings open with such force that it slams against the wall.

“What did you do?” he asks.

It’s Ezra, but it’s – his eyes are wider than she’s ever seen and his jaw is tight and he’s _glowering_ at her, she’s seen him angry but this is almost unhinged, this is – he strides across the room to her. “Aria! What did you do?” This time, he’s practically bellowing.

“Wh-what?” she asks. She’s quivering like a scared insect.

He grabs her by the upper arm and yanks her to her feet with a sharp tug; she clamps her teeth together to keep from whimpering in pain. “I saw the footage, Aria,” he says, and her name sounds like a threat in his voice, it sounds like murder, a blade across her throat.

“Of what?” she asks.

She knows what footage he’s talking about, of course: the footage of her going into his office. She’s been afraid of this ever since. But she knows she _can’t_ know what he’s talking about, not if she’s going to be convincing, and even through the searing heat of her panic she knows not to let herself know this.

“You went into my office,” he says, and then he shakes her for emphasis. His grip on her arm is going to leave bruises. “What were you doing in my office?”

She blinks at him. “That?” she asks. “That – I was looking for Advil, Ezra! I had a headache, I was looking everywhere–”

“And you thought you could go into my private space?” he asks.

Aria doesn’t have to force her tears, but she does have to force herself to say what she needs to say next. “I’ve been doing that for over a year,” she says, her voice soft, and then she lets him hear the quiet sob that follows.

Ezra just looks down at her, face inscrutable.

“I swear, Ezra, I was just looking for Advil, I _swear_ ,” she says, voice trembling. “I’m sorry, I – I won’t do it again.”

Neither of them speaks for a moment. “No, you won’t,” Ezra says at last, but he lets go of her arm, and she backs away from him on instinct. She doesn’t sit on her bed – something about that feels too vulnerable, even though she’s fully dressed and he hasn’t shown the slightest interest or inclination since she found out – but she stumbles backwards until the backs of her calves are pressed against the baseboard of the bed, and she holds the red mark on her arm where he’d gripped her with his other hand.

“What did you see when you were in there?” Ezra asks.

Aria swallows. “Photos of Ali,” she says. “Um, there were papers on your desk. It looked like financial stuff. I didn’t look at them, though, I just saw numbers.”

Ezra smirks, letting out a low hum that sounds like something halfway to a chuckle. “I guess you wouldn’t recognize tax forms, would you?” he asks.

Ezra’s never been inclined to make comments about her age; they’d always been so entrenched in the idea that age was just a number, that it didn’t mean anything. Now he can’t pass up an opportunity to mock her about it, to patronize her, as though he’s making up for the last year of biting his tongue about it. She’d always assumed they were on the same page about her maturity. It had never occurred to her that he’d been humoring her the whole time, keeping his real thoughts to himself.

She wonders if this is what it felt like for her mother to find out her dad had been hiding an affair from her – to find out Aria had been hiding his affair from her for two years. Maybe this is what she deserves, to go from being the betrayer to being the betrayed. She wonders what Alison would have to say about her, what A would have to say about her –

– she knows what A has to say about her. He’s standing right in front of her, and he’s already said it.

Aria bites down on her lip, and squeezes her arm tighter.

Ezra sighs and looks over his shoulder, like he’s already bored of her and out of patience to see if she’ll provide any entertainment. Then he fixes his gaze on her and raises an eyebrow. “When’s the last time you changed your clothes?”

Aria shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s been too long,” he says. “You were wearing the same outfit in the footage.”

“It’s not like I packed for –” Aria stops herself mid-sentence.

Ezra smiles. “Check the closet,” he says, and then looks her up and down. “Then again, they may not fit you anymore. Ah, well, you’ll make it work.”

“You went shopping for me?” Aria asks. Her voice shakes a little.

Ezra laughs. “I’m not sure I quite captured your… unique flair,” he says, and Aria’s skin crawls at the assessment of her style. “Take a shower and change. I’ll get some lunch ready.” The Spencer in Aria’s brain files away the fact that it’s lunchtime, but Aria can’t really find it in herself to care that much right now. “Oh, and,” Ezra holds a hand out in midair, “um, put on some makeup, would you? You look a bit like a corpse.” He strolls out of the room, and she hears him lock the door from the other side.

The second his footsteps fade out of hearing she clamps her hands over her mouth and shudders with her whole body, a silent sob, the kind so forceful it hurts her stomach. She takes deep breaths for a few moments, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back the flow of tears, and then, once she pulls herself together enough, makes her way over to the closet and opens it.

It’s full of dresses. Almost all of them have the kinds of cinched waists and flared skirts she used to wear a lot back when she and Ezra first met; the kind she’d since started trading in for more sophisticated silhouettes and avant-garde figures. The kind she’d mostly stopped wearing in order to look older. She doesn’t know what message Ezra’s trying to send, that he liked it when she dressed younger or just that he doesn’t like her style, but either way the implication makes her feel ill.

There are a few drawers in the closet; she opens the top one, which is full of all sorts of patterned tights, and then the second, which is full of bras and underwear – a week ago, Ezra buying her nice underwear would have seemed sexy to her, but now it makes her stomach drop.

She goes to the bathroom attached to her room and showers. She steps under the stream of water, and all of a sudden, she remembers what Maggie had called her, just a few weeks ago: _“… a kid who maintains her grade point average by sleeping with her teacher.”_

She turns the knob to run the water as hot as she can, as though burning a layer of skin off will make her feel less gross about herself.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thinks about how Hanna would give her props for driving up Ezra’s water bill, and the thought makes her smile a little but it doesn’t make her laugh. There’s a razor in the shower, so she shaves even though she doesn’t want to, because if Ezra minds her not wearing makeup then he definitely won’t be pleased at her having armpit hair. She hates that showering makes her feel even a little bit better, but it does, if only because she no longer smells like the woods where everything had gone wrong, where her life had changed forever. She’s spent too much of the last couple of years being terrified in the woods, but this had been the worst of all; she’s definitely never getting a cottage. If she ever gets out of here, that is.

She brushes out and dries her hair, puts on her makeup, working on autopilot; she does herself up just enough to have followed Ezra’s instructions. She puts on a black dress and a pair of patterned black tights. Not a single pair of shoes in the closet looks remotely comfortable; she goes with a pair of black booties with a low heel. She hates feeling like she’s dressing up for him. She hates that he’s choosing her outfits, like she’s a little doll he gets to play dress up with. Her clothes have always been her strength, her armor, her art, _hers_ , and now she doesn’t even have that anymore.

She closes her eyes and breathes. _Think, Aria, think_. Ezra’s going to have lunch with her, which means she needs to suppress everything she can and focus on getting _something_ out of this, out of him. Ezra’s having lunch with her; unless he’s deliberately trying to deceive her about the time of day, that means he’s free to be here for lunch, which means it must be a weekend. It’s been almost a week, then, and that’s not _really_ a surprise but it leaves her feeling hollow. She’s sure her friends have figured out what’s happened to her, but for all she knows they’re being threatened into silence, and with her mom in Europe and her dad in Syracuse all the time, there’s no one but Mike to notice that she hasn’t been home, and she has no idea how much Mike’s even been around the house, nowadays. She hasn’t been at school, but Ezra works at the school, and he’s freaking A; he can fudge the attendance records, or make sure the administration is informed that she’s down with a bad case of mono, or _something_. She’s never been the one whose parents are always out of town while her life falls apart – that was always Spencer, in that big, empty house – and just thinking about it makes her feel more alone than ever.  

So she’ll think about something else. Wilden – she can try to figure out why Ezra knows Wilden wasn’t the one who got Ali pregnant. She can enter this lunch armed with a mission. It’s something, at least.

She looks at herself in the mirror just long enough to know Ezra will approve and to let that thought make her feel sick, and then walks to the door of her room. He’s unlocked it by now – he must have done so while she was in the shower. She turns the knob and walks out towards the kitchen.

Ezra made a salad. Something about that, the fact that Ezra prepared food and didn’t just order something in or grab something from a nearby store, makes her want to cry – then again, maybe he’s just making sure she doesn’t see any labels that could clue her in as to where they are. “Much better,” he says when he sees her, and she ignores him and takes a seat at the table. She serves herself. Part of her thinks she should wait for his okay, now that she doesn’t know what will set him off, but the last thing she wants is him to serve her so she decides the risk is worth it. The salad is fine when Ezra’s cooking has always been great, but then she’s not a priority to him anymore, so it makes sense he wouldn’t care to put in the effort.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks. “Do you have more pictures or something?”

“Not exactly,” Ezra says. “I wanted for us to… talk.”

Aria blinks at him, keeping her eyes wide and blank. “About?” she asks.

“About Alison,” Ezra replies. “And your father.”

For a moment, Aria’s chest is ready to seize in panic. He must have figured out where that photo of Alison had been taken, and that she’d lied to him about it, and – if she panics, she risks giving something away. She can’t panic; she can’t even think about the reason she has to panic.

“…yeah?” she asks, after a moment.

Ezra rolls his eyes. “Cut the crap, Aria. You know about them.”

“Yeah, she knew about Meredith and she was blackmailing him for money,” Aria says. “She was threatening to tell my mom. That’s… everyone knows that, now.” By everyone, of course, she means she and her friends and presumably the A-Team, but there hasn’t been anyone else that mattered for a long time. The game was all there was, no matter how much they tried to fight it, and there wasn’t any space for anyone else.

“Do you think Ali was sleeping with your father?” Ezra asks.

“No!” Aria doesn’t even think before she’s throwing the word across the table at him.

Ezra raises an eyebrow. “That was emphatic.”

Aria feels sick at the very suggestion. “No, he – just, no.” _He’s not like you_ , she thinks, but that thought makes her feel even more nauseous.

“Hm,” Ezra says, and looks back down at his plate. “I haven’t found any proof, but I was curious, with your dad having a penchant for young blondes and all. Maybe you’re right.”

She can tell from his tone that he isn’t going to give her anything more, which means this is her chance to strike. “Wait, why are you trying to figure out who else Ali was with that summer?” she asks.

Ezra looks back up at her, amused. “Oh, come on, Aria. We both know there were plenty of others, and this is Alison. There’s a good chance she’s managed to keep a few under wraps for this long.”

“Then how are you so sure you’re the one who…” Aria can’t finish the sentence, can’t get out those words, but she can tell that Ezra knows exactly what it is she can’t bring herself to say. “How do you know it wasn’t Wilden, or Ian?”

Ezra studies her for a moment, and then the corner of his mouth quirks up. “It wasn’t Ian, the timelines don’t match up.”

“And Wilden?”

Ezra’s smile widens into a smirk. “Alison was already pregnant when she met Wilden,” he says.

Aria doesn’t want to think about what that means, but she knows, by the dropping of her stomach and the bile rising in her throat.

_Alison was pregnant all summer_ , she thinks, dizzy even though she’s sitting down and even sicker than before. The entire world’s been pulled out from under her feet so many times by now she’s not even sure she has a center of gravity anymore; she’s anchorless, all alone, and spinning, spinning, spinning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, guys. I hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	14. dark waters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spencer blinks. No, that’s not quite right; her eyes close, and she has to force them to shutter open. It’s slow, disjointed, like she’s only pretending to be a human and nothing about it comes naturally.

Spencer feels all wrong, walking into school Monday morning, and not just because of the exhaustion: it’s a whole other week with Aria missing in action. It’s another week that Aria’s parents aren’t in town to notice her absence, another week of classes Aria can’t attend, another week of life Aria doesn’t get to live – or of whatever waking nightmare passes as life for them, in the surveillance state from hell they walk around under. She’s used to fearing for her friends’ lives, but the immediate threats have usually been short lived. It’s never been like this before.

(Something in her mind pipes up that this is what it’s like with Ali, ever since they found out that she’s alive, but it’s not. The thought makes Spencer feel nauseous with guilt, but it’s not.)

She walks through the courtyard as though in a daze. It should be too cold to wear a skirt without tights, but she can hardly feel the wind biting at her bare thighs, and doesn’t even realize she’s freezing until she looks down and sees that her skin is bright red. She pauses, then shrugs, adjusts her grip on her crossbody strap, and keeps walking.

“Spencer! Hey, Spencer!”

That, too, takes her a second to notice – anything in the real world, anything outside of her own mind, seems to breeze past her, and it takes her a moment to tune back in to what’s around her.

She turns around, and her stomach drops: it’s Mike Montgomery.

“Spencer, hey,” he says, coming to a stop in front of her. He’s in a fall coat and wearing a scarf and a hat, and his cheeks are tinged pink.

“Mike,” she says, and forces a smile. “What’s up?” She notices the big gym bag on his back, and remembers, the knowledge scratching its way in like her mind needs its hinges oiled, that Mike had been out of town for a lacrosse game that weekend. “How’d the game go?”

“We won,” he says easily, like he’s trying to brush the chitchat out of the way. “Listen, before the bell rings, I just wanted to ask how Aria’s doing.”

Spencer blinks. No, that’s not quite right; her eyes close, and she has to force them to shutter open. It’s slow, disjointed, like she’s only pretending to be a human and nothing about it comes naturally.

“She’s staying at your place, right?” Mike asks. “Since you’ve had mono before –”

“Sorry, yeah,” Spencer says, shaking her head and laughing. “Wow, sorry, I’m so out of it today.” So Ezra was playing at Aria being home with mono. She hates that he can make it so her absence raises no suspicion; she hates that it makes her life easier. “Yeah, she’s… I mean, she’s not great, obviously, but, you know, she’s getting lots of rest and fluids.” She shrugs a little. “I’ll tell her you checked in, okay?” The last part feels like charcoal in her throat to say, but she says it anyway.

Mike nods. “Thanks,” he says. “I keep telling her I’ll come by, but she won’t let me skip practice to see her.”

Spencer smiles, mouth closed. “She is your big sister,” she says.

Mike laughs. “Yeah,” he says. “Well, see you around, I guess.”

He heads off into the school, and Spencer watches him leave, feeling even worse.

She drifts through the rest of the school day, the hours and classes passing by without her paying attention for even a moment. A couple of teachers ask after Aria, and Spencer lets the lies leave her lips on autopilot.  

She doesn’t do any schoolwork that night, just gets to work on her research, and as usual, she doesn’t sleep that night. When the sun comes up, she drags herself into the shower, gets dressed, and goes through the motions again.

By the time she gets home Wednesday afternoon, she’s so tired that she almost doesn’t notice the suitcase parked by the door.

_Melissa_.

“Hello?” she calls out. “Melissa?” There’s no good reason for Melissa’s suitcase to be in the main house, since Melissa usually stays in the barn, but, of course, the Hastings are nothing if not reliably dramatic and passive aggressive, and that extends to how they let the rest of the family know they’re home from a trip.

“Spencer?” Melissa’s voice sounds like it’s coming from the kitchen, and sure enough, when Spencer walks in, Melissa’s standing in front of the open fridge door.

“You’re back,” Spencer says, even though she’s had it drilled into her since birth that there’s no need to state the obvious like that.

“Yeah, I just got in half an hour ago.” Melissa turns back to the fridge. “How was school?”

“Fine,” Spencer says, feeling absolutely disoriented. She hadn’t paid a moment of attention in class, of course. She doesn’t know what to make of this, of having spent almost a week in terrified anticipation only to be in the kitchen with Melissa, chatting about something as mundane as school. “Look, Melissa, can we talk?”

Melissa tenses immediately. “Spencer, I’m so jetlagged,” she says. “Can it wait until tomorrow? I was just grabbing a snack to take back to the barn.”

If she wasn’t hiding something, she would have responded with a blasé _sure, what’s up_?

Spencer squares her shoulders. “Actually, it’s kind of important,” she says. Her heartbeat is fast and uneven, and the tips of her fingers are tingling like they’ve fallen asleep, but Aria is with _him_ and scared and alone and hurting, and she hasn’t been able to do a single thing about it until now, and this is her chance, this is the thing she can do.  “Why did you tell Wren to take a job at Radley?”

Melissa goes still for a moment; then, she shuts the fridge and turns around. “Spencer –”

“Don’t tell me to let it go again,” Spencer says. She thinks back to that night on the bridge, Melissa throwing fragments of the castings of her face into the dark water. _You have to let it go, or it will come apart in ways you cannot even imagine_. Then her mind flashes to Ezra closing the door to his classroom, slow and deliberate, leaving her plenty of time to bolt but knowing she’ll sit still as he traps her inside; to that picture of Aria, out cold on the cement floor, A’s captive doll for over a week now. “It’s too late to let it go.”

Melissa sighs. “I don’t want to get into this now, I’m –”

“What, tired?” Spencer laughs, and it hurts her throat. “We’re all tired, Melissa. Suck it up.”

Melissa looks up at her, and Spencer can tell on her face that she’s only just noticed the dark circles under Spencer’s eyes, the gauntness of her cheeks. “Spencer,” Melissa says, in a voice like walking on a tightrope, and takes a step forward. “You do not want to go down this road.”

“Since when does what I _want_ factor into any of this?” Spencer asks. She takes a step forward, and then a rush of dizziness hits her so hard she has to grab the counter. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and swallows. “I’m making coffee,” she says. “And then we’re going to talk.”

Neither of them speak for the next few minutes; Melissa sits on the couch, and Spencer stands next to the coffee pot, waiting for it to brew. When it’s ready, Spencer pours them each a mug, brings them over to the coffee table, and then sits, right across from Melissa.

“Wren,” Spencer says. “Tell me why.”

Melissa swallows, and looks away. “It’s complicated,” she says.

“Did you want him keeping an eye on someone?” Spencer asks. When Melissa doesn’t answer, she presses forward. “Charlotte?”

Melissa flinches so violently it takes Spencer aback. “How do you know about Charlotte?” she asks.

Emily had told them all, of course, over coffee on Sunday morning, but that wasn’t for Melissa to know. “So it was?” Spencer asks. “That’s who you were visiting. That’s – and you met up with her in the backyard, the night Ali went missing. She knows something, you two have some sort of secret.”

“It’s not like that,” Melissa says, speaking every word like it’s being carved out of her.

“It isn’t?” Spencer asks. “So you didn’t ask Wren to take a job at Radley to keep an eye on her?”

“No,” Melissa says, emphatic.

“Then why did you?” Spencer asks.

Melissa closes her eyes. “It wasn’t so that Wren could keep an eye on Charlotte,” she says after a moment, voice quiet and resigned. “It was so Charlotte could keep an eye on Wren.”  

It doesn’t feel like the floor has dropped out from under Spencer, because that would mean she had a floor under her to begin with, and she’s been without a center of gravity or anything steady to stand on for too long now. But her muscles twitch without her meaning for them too, and it takes her a moment to remember how to breathe again.

When Spencer had been in the third grade, she’d had recurring nightmares about getting caught in a whirlpool while swimming, getting pulled under the water and thrown from side to side, spinning around and around, and all the while fighting desperately to break the surface long enough to take a single breath. The next time they’d gone up to the family lakehouse, she’d been too scared to get in the water, so Melissa had shoved her in off the dock when she wasn’t expecting it, and her parents told her it was for the best, that now she’d know that it was just a silly fear, a childish phobia.

She doesn’t remember the relief at breaking the surface, though, just the way every nerve in her body caught fire with panic, the way months of nightmares crashed their way into her reality all at once.

Spencer digs her fingers into the sofa cushion underneath her, and takes a deep breath.

“Why?” she asks, finally.

Melissa isn’t looking at her, and has her eyes trained on the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter instead. She sighs. “It’s complicated, Spencer.”

“Then explain it to me,” Spencer says.

Melissa opens her mouth as though she’s going to say more, then sighs again, shoulders sinking just a fraction. She looks down for a moment, and then lifts her gaze to meet Spencer’s. “Spencer,” she says, and Spencer goes rigid just at the sound of her name, in that tone, that cool condescension disguised as concern. “I know you, I know how desperately you want answers. I wish I could give them to you, but I can’t. There are things that wouldn’t be safe for you to know.”

“Safe?” Spencer asks, and she laughs, the sound wild and manic and taking even her by surprise. “You think I’m safe not knowing? I haven’t been anything remotely resembling safe in a _long_ time, Melissa. I don’t even remember what safe looks like anymore.”

Melissa just looks at her with that inscrutable face of hers; she could be worried, or annoyed, or tired, or just confused, or none of those things at all.

“You’ve been in London for weeks, Melissa,” Spencer says, and for a moment she thinks she’s going to cry, just start howling like an animal, but she reins it in. “You don’t know what’s been going on here, okay? You don’t know what it’s become.”

The corner of Melissa’s mouth twitches, just a little. “Maybe not,” she says. “But I know what it was before you even knew it existed.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Spencer says, her voice cracking, “oh my god, Melissa, can we please not do this?” She blinks quickly, and only then does she realize that she’s started to cry. “I don’t have the time for one of our cryptic, coded conversations, okay, not now, not anymore.”

She can feel her heart pounding in her head, in her throat, in the pads of her thumbs. She wipes under her eyes with both hands and takes a shaking breath.

“It’s not just about Ali anymore, okay?” she says. “Aria’s in danger. She’s in danger right now, and I can’t help her.”

It’s so honest Spencer feels like someone’s thrown a brick into her chest. She scrapes her nails along the sides of her thighs and wills herself not to cry anymore.

Melissa swallows. “I –” she cuts herself off, and looks over her shoulder. “I don’t know what you want from me, Spencer,” she says, her words quick and terse. “I’m sorry for – for whatever it is, with Aria, I really am, but I can’t help her, either.”

“You can tell me,” Spencer says, and every word feels like a knife in her throat, “why you wanted Charlotte to keep an eye on Wren.”

Melissa looks at her, and she looks afraid; she’s always been too good of a secret keeper, her sister, and she’s never given one up out of kindness.

“Melissa,” Spencer says, and it doesn’t even sound like she’s begging, she sounds too tired to be begging, “please.”

Melissa closes her eyes for a long moment. She exhales through pursed lips, and opens her eyes.

“I found out Wren went to boarding school in New England, and I went through his yearbooks,” she says, every word clear and deliberate. “His roommate three years in a row was Ezra Fitzgerald.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading, guys – I know I'm terrible at replying to comments, but I really, really appreciate all of your support. I hope you enjoyed this chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, guys! I'm so excited to finally share this!
> 
> I do read all my comments here, but if you have questions or want to reach me, you can also find me on tumblr at alisonhastings.
> 
> This fic also has some accompanying playlists over on 8tracks, for anyone who's interested:
> 
> all things truly wicked: https://8tracks.com/fellowshipofthefalls/all-things-truly-wicked
> 
> aria: https://8tracks.com/fellowshipofthefalls/a-r-i-a
> 
> spencer: https://8tracks.com/fellowshipofthefalls/s-p-e-n-c-e-r
> 
> hanna: https://8tracks.com/fellowshipofthefalls/h-a-n-n-a
> 
> emily: https://8tracks.com/fellowshipofthefalls/e-m-i-l-y


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